


The Morning After

by ArtemisPendragon (ArtemisPendragyn)



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: (heavily implied), Accidental Marriage, Bad Flirting, Crack Treated Seriously, Dark Will Graham, Dogs, Drunk Sex, Drunken Shenanigans, Fluff and Crack, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Implied Sexual Content, Las Vegas Wedding, Love Confessions, M/M, Murder Husbands, Murder Mystery, Mystery, Seduction, Will Graham Loves Hannibal Lecter, be gay do crimes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:35:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26238709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisPendragyn/pseuds/ArtemisPendragon
Summary: Will wakes up alone in a (completely trashed) luxury hotel room in Las Vegas. The last thing he remembers is a couple of bounty hunters tracking him and Hannibal down in Cuba, but after that it's a blank. At first he's relieved not to be in prison, but as more evidence comes to light and he begins to reconstruct the drunken events of the night before, he realizes that he and Hannibal might actually be in more trouble--and danger--than if they had simply been turned in to the FBI.This is the Season 4 Hangover AU no one asked for. Actually a lot of y'all seemed enthused about this, so you know I had to do it to em.
Relationships: Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 134
Kudos: 281





	1. That's What You Get For Waking Up In Vegas

****

**Chapter One**

_“Authorities believe that the massacre occurred in the early hours this morning. The perpetrators are believed to be involved in drug and weapons trafficking; the victims have been identified as members of the Redcrest Cartel, although drug lord Richard Kraken was not found among the dead.”_

Will drifted through a haze of delirious pain. The stilted voice of a news reporter filtered into his conscious, loud and brash. His head throbbed, and he felt as if he’d been mauled by a particularly bad-natured lion. Groaning, he rolled over, pressing a hand to his forehead and opening his eyes just enough to glimpse his surroundings. 

If someone had offered him a billion dollars to guess where he was, he would have lost it all. Not even if he had a hundred guesses. Because, although he was relatively sure he had just woken up in an obscenely luxurious hotel room, the geographical placement of the room escaped him. Lying curled on a sheetless mattress on the floor of a room that probably cost around five-thousand dollars per night, his first thought was, _Oh shit, I’ve been sleepwalking again._ Had the encephalitis returned? He knew it was possible; it could flare up under the right circumstances, although it hadn’t bothered him in years. 

But that didn’t explain how he’d ended up in a place like this. There was a big difference between sleepwalking and sleep-renting-a-luxury-hotel-suite. He could be in Cuba (at least he hoped he was—that’s where he was supposed to be, after all), or he could be on the other side of the world. His mind was a blank slate, and the more he reached for memories of last night, the more they evaded him. The droning voice of the reporter rose above the pounding of blood in his ears, issuing from a TV set high on the wall across the living room, and his headache grew almost unbearable.

 _“However,”_ the reporter was saying, “ _a car believed to have belonged to Richard Kraken was found a few miles down the road; the car had been lit on fire, and the body of an as-of-yet unidentified police officer was found at the secondary crime scene.”_

Will looked for a remote to turn it off. When one didn’t immediately present itself, he lowered his head onto his arm, exhaled loudly, and closed his eyes.

The reporter continued, still in the same monotone voice. _“It is unclear what the catalyst for the brutal killings may have been, but it’s likely that it was a deal gone bad. It appears that the officer had pulled over Kraken’s vehicle shortly before he was killed. Kraken’s vehicle was set aflame and authorities believe that the suspects then stole the officer’s car and fled the scene. As of now no suspects have been named, and the search for those involved is ongoing. If you have any information regarding either the massacre of the Redcrest Cartel or the murder of a police officer in the desert outside Las Vegas, call Las Vegas PD immediately.”_

The news story ended, and the channel turned to ads. Will turned over to glare at the TV as bright images of flashy new cars splashed across the screen, a seductive woman’s voice accompanying the tirade of _Great New Deals!_ and _Get Them Before They’re Gone!_ By the end of the ad, Will was certain he was in the United States. Specifically, Las Vegas. Which was something, if not something good. In fact, America was the last place he wanted to be. No one in their right mind enjoyed waking up with no memories in a country where they were wanted for murder. 

Not that Will was in his right mind. But he was sane (and sober) enough to properly resent the situation. 

It took some mulling over of the probabilities and possibilities before a memory caught up to him, and panic flared red-hot in his chest. He sat up, immediately regretting it as his head spun. The last thing he remembered was going out to a fancy restaurant with Hannibal. A fancy restaurant in Cuba. And then…

Then the bounty hunters had shown up. 

And that was the last thing he remembered.

Swearing under his breath, Will used a cracked statue of some half-naked Greek god to get vertical. He swayed, breathing through his nose, trying to ignore the rising nausea. For a moment he stood perfectly still, clinging to the statue. Then he raised his head and took a sweeping look around the room.

The room was as wrecked as Will felt. The black marble floor was slick with liquor and wine spilling from overturned and broken bottles, the air heavy with the scent of alcohol. He covered his nose with one hand, nausea surging. He closed his eyes as spots danced in his vision. In that moment he decided that, before he could process and unravel the mystery of what had led to him waking up in a trashed hotel in Vegas, he would need to sober up. And the best way to do that was to have a shower. Assuming the shower still worked, of course.

The shower did work. In fact, it was already on, steam filling the absurdly large bathroom, thick with the cloying scent of lavender and rose petals. The problem was that there was a body in the tub. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal—Will knew how to deal with bodies—if not for one little thing.

The body in the tub was Denny White, the newly inaugurated President of the United States of America. 

Will stood staring at the tub for a solid minute, unblinking, shaky with shock and disbelief. The body had been thoroughly desecrated, the head cut off and the limbs detached from the torso, which had been unceremoniously ripped open from sternum to groin. Blood and water ran down the drain, the scent of death and decay covered by lavender and rose. The legs and arms were lashed together with hotel towels, bundled up and set apart from the head and torso. The towels bore the embroidered letters _CP._

In that moment, Will decided he didn’t have the energy to deal with this right now. Instead, he crossed to the sink and turned it on, splashing water on his face. As he reached for a towel to dry himself off, he caught sight of himself in the gold-trimmed mirror. 

He was a mess. His hair was matted and plastered to one side of his face with blood, he had a split lip, and a bruise was forming around his right eye. And that wasn’t even the worst of it; as he pulled off his shirt (quite torn and missing most of its buttons), he became suddenly aware of the bite marks on his neck and shoulder. That, along with what were clearly scratches running down his back, painted a picture that contrasted sharply with the scenarios Will had been recreating based on prior evidence. He swore again, louder this time, and began searching the cabinets for a bandaid—anything to cover up the very visible and vivid bite just under his jaw. Right over his pulse point, he realized, and rubbed at it, wincing. 

Once he’d cleaned himself up, he returned to the tub. He turned off the shower, pulling down the shower curtain to cover the body. He still wasn’t sure if he was alone, and the marks all over his neck and back suggested he’d had overnight company. What kind, he didn’t know. 

He decided that, before reemerging into the living room, he should take a moment to go over everything he knew so far.

One. The last thing he remembered was having dinner with Hannibal.

Two. The FBI's bounty hunters had found them.

Three. He had amnesia. 

Four. He was in Las Vegas.

Five. That was bad.

Six. The President of the United States was dead in his hotel bathroom.

Seven. That was really bad.

Eight. He had no idea where Hannibal was.

Nine. That was really, really bad.

Suddenly overcome with another wave of dizziness and nausea, he grabbed the rim of the massive bathtub—more of a hot tub than anything—and threw up into it. Shaky and weak, he slid to the ground, tucking his knees up to his chest, looping his arms around them and intertwining his fingers.

“Shit,” he said aloud. His voice echoed through the room, startling him. Sighing, he lowered his forehead to his knees and focused on breathing steadily.

And that’s when he heard it: the unmistakable _beep_ of someone sliding a key card on a hotel door.

Whoever it was he had spent the night with was back. And for all he knew, they had brought the police back with them. 

For one insane moment, he wondered how long it would take to cut up a body and flush it down the toilet piece by piece. The answer, of course, was _too long,_ so he’d need a Plan B. 

The door to the room swung open outside, and Will panicked.

Plan B, which wasn’t much of a plan at all, was to hide in the bathtub. With the dead President. The dismembered, towel-wrapped, lavender-scented, puke-covered dead President.

Before Will could enact Plan B, the bathroom door swung open. Will spun around, ready to fight, and froze with one foot in the tub. 

“Hello, Will.” Hannibal stood in the doorway looking uncharacteristically ruffled. He wore a black dress shirt with the buttons halfway undone, his hair messy and uncombed. “I was afraid you’d gone.”

Will stared at him for a long moment. And then, “There’s a dead politician in this bathtub,” he said.

Hannibal’s expression remained neutral.

“It’s the President.” Will pulled back the curtain to reveal the sodden mess of blood and guts. “I think we killed the President, Hannibal.”

For a long moment, Hannibal stood perfectly still and silent. Then he crossed the bathroom in six long strides to stand beside Will. “It appears we have,” he said mildly. “It also appears you’ve vomited on him.”

Will swallowed heavily. “What do you remember?”

Hannibal tilted his head contemplatively. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer for the NSA: The dead politician in the bathtub is definitely not based on any real person. I pinky promise.


	2. The Honeymoon Suite

****

**Chapter Two**

Will was afraid to leave the bathroom. Not only did he feel sick, but he was reluctant to challenge his assumption that the dead President was the worst thing he and Hannibal would find in the trashed room. In fact, if not for the all-consuming fear of discovery and arrest, Will would have stayed in that ridiculous, gilded, marble-countered room until the end of days. Or until he got really hungry. Whichever came first.

Getting really hungry came first. Waiting for Hannibal to call him back out into the main room, Will's not-entirely-sober mind drifted to breakfast. Or lunch, dinner, midnight snack, whatever. Although, judging by the natural light in the room where he'd woke up, it was late morning. Normally he wasn't interested in food after a night of hard drinking (or whatever the fuck had happened last night) but this hangover wasn't normal. He felt light and dizzy, and much more confused than he should. After all, he wasn't blackout drunk anymore. So why was everything still so hazy?

And, of course, there was the severe transient global amnesia to consider. Which was how he would think of it until he had a better explanation—if ‘better’ was the right word. Which it probably wasn't. Although, given the absolutely shit state of things, one would imagine it could only go uphill from there. 

Unfortunately, Will's fickle imagination, feeding on the appalling evidence surrounding him, projected a steep downhill future. Things would get worse before they got better.

 _If_ they got better.

"Will.” Hannibal’s voice was muffled behind the heavy bathroom door. "There's something that I think you'd like to see."

“ _Like_ to see," Will replied, "or _need_ to see? Because I'm not sure there's anything I'd _like_ to see right now, unless it's a couple of well-forged passports and no-questions-asked tickets back to Cuba."

"I believe you are underestimating your own capacity for joy, Will. I promise this is something you’ll enjoy."

Reluctantly curious, Will buttoned up his shirt (as much as he could given the scarcity of working buttons), flattened the band-aid covering the bitemark on his throat, and emerged into the living room.

"What," he said.

Hannibal smiled. Actually smiled, the bastard, as he always did in the face of misfortune. In fact, Will believed Hannibal was inclined to smile more in dangerous situations than pleasant ones, especially if he considered himself one move ahead of everyone else on the board. Which begged the question: how much did Hannibal actually remember? And if he remembered anything, why was he pretending he didn't? 

"Come." Hannibal strode across the room, lacking some of his usual grace as his foot slid in a puddle of wine, and down an elegant hallway covered in sky blue wallpaper illuminated by white lights in gilded fixtures. He stopped at the end of the hall in front of an oakwood door. He glanced back at Will, raising an eyebrow. "I promise there is nothing bad inside this room."

Will crossed his arms and stayed where he was. "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with your idea of good and bad."

Only the slightest shift in posture betrayed Hannibal's irritation. "Will. You're being difficult."

"This whole situation is difficult."

"And your attitude won’t fix it. Aren't you interested in unravelling this mystery that we have become so inextricably entangled in?"

Will frowned, running a hand through his messy hair. He'd managed to get out most of the blood and dirt in the sink, but the cut on his scalp throbbed viciously, and his split lip stung when he spoke. "Curiosity killed the cat," he said.

"And satisfaction brought it back. Aren't you curious, Will?"

Will wanted to say 'no', but his head hurt and he was hungry and tired and annoyed and arguing with Hannibal was about as productive as punching a statue in the face. Which, judging by the state of the statues in the room, may have been an activity he had engaged in overnight. Although his hands were unbroken and his knuckles un-scuffed, so maybe not.

Without waiting for further confirmation, Hannibal pushed open the door, stepping back and to the side. Will caught a glimpse of flurried movement in the extravagant master bedroom beyond, and then they were on him—a veritable swarm of dogs of varying shapes and sizes, yelping and wriggling as they danced around Will’s legs and leapt up to put their paws on his chest and shoulders. One, a German Shepherd with a notch in one ear and what looked like a military dog collar around her neck, managed to land a few licks on Will’s face before he staggered back, astonished and confused, to cling to one of the fancy light fixtures.

“What the hell?” His vision blurred and the fixture groaned under his weight. The dogs surged around him, still sniffing and licking his hands, and he instinctively reached out to scratch behind their ears and under their collars. 

Or _collar_ , singular. Only one had a collar. Which was odd—unless they were all strays? But if so, how had they gotten here? How had _he gotten them here?_ Because obviously that’s what had happened. He knew Hannibal well enough to say with absolute certainty that this was a Something Will Would Do While High And/Or Drunk, Not Something Hannibal Would Do kind of situation.

As the dogs continued their joyful greeting dance, some of the smaller ones slipped past Will and made for the living room. As they did, his confusion and astonishment turned to delight, watching their tails wag as they jostled each other, exploring their new environment. However, delight was quickly followed by more confusion, and then nervous dread.

“Hannibal.” Will whirled to face him. “How the fuck are we going to get all these dogs back out?”

“I think the more pressing issue is ‘how did they get in?’”

Will grabbed the German Shepherd by the collar as she made a bid for the living room, where the other ( _one, two, three, four, five, six, seven… oh, God)_ dogs were already milling around, sniffing the floored mattress and wading through puddles of wine and whiskey. 

“Oh, shit.” Will let go of the German Shepherd ( _Trinity,_ the name tag on her collar said) and lunged after his new charges. “Don’t… be careful, hey, hey, don’t step in that, there’s glass. Come here. _Come._ Sit. Stay. Good. Okay, you stay, _stay_ … oh, fuck, get away from that… here, come here, _sit…_ ”

Will felt Hannibal’s amused gaze on him as he struggled to wrestle eight— _eight, fuck_ —dogs back into the master bedroom where Hannibal had found them. It was a herculean effort, but he managed it, although his hands and wrists suffered several scratches and nip-marks in the process. Shutting the door tight, he leaned against it, chest heaving, and tilted his head back until it hit wood. 

“Well done,” said Hannibal.

Will glared at him. “You couldn’t’ve helped at all?”

“You had it handled. I’m confident in your ability to deal with dogs.”

“ _Deal with_.” Will laughed. “You mean _wrangle?_ ”

“Yes. _Wrangle_ is a good word. It evokes imagery of the Old West. To _wrangle_ something untamed is to engage in a noble endeavor to bring order to the unorganized, to find—”

“You are so unbelievably full of shit,” Will said, quite a bit louder than intended. But it had the desired effect of shutting Hannibal up. “What the _hell_ are you talking about?”

Hannibal sighed. For a moment his calm mask slipped, and Will saw his own confusion and anxiety reflected in his face. “This is quite a lot to process, Will. I’m surprised at how well you’re handling it.”

“Handling it.” Will laughed again, half insane. “I just woke up in Las Vegas in a trashed hotel room that easily costs several thousand _a night,_ with a pack of stray dogs in the master bedroom, smashed bottles all over the floor, and the dead President of the United States in the bathtub. Oh, and don’t let me forget the head wound and fucking _scratches!_ And bitemarks, which, if I didn’t know better, I’d accuse you of leaving on me. Which, for all we know, could be the case! What did we do last night, Hannibal? Because from what I can tell, there’s a significant chance—a _very high chance_ —that we slept together.”

There was a long, tense silence. Hannibal’s mask didn’t slip this time. “I woke up on the mattress next to you, Will. But we weren’t touching. I believe we made a conscious effort to sleep on opposite sides.”

Suddenly overcome with righteous anger born of frustration, Will ripped off the band-aid on his throat and pointed to the raw, vivid bite mark. “Well then who the _hell_ bit me like a goddamn vampire?”

Hannibal shrugged. The corner of his mouth slanted up for the briefest moment, then straightened again. “Perhaps you had company of another sort. Prostitution is legal in Nevada, I believe.”

Will stared at him. “I can’t tell if you’re joking. You better be joking, Hannibal.”

“What would you consider more insulting? If I were insinuating that you had hired a prostitute, or that you had been hired as one?”

“I find it insulting,” Will said through clenched teeth, “that you’re insinuating I would be that reckless with our safety. With our _anonymity,_ Hannibal! Saying the wrong thing to the wrong person could get us arrested. Or killed. Probably both. So yeah, it’s insulting that you think I’d risk that.”

“Then we slept together,” Hannibal said with an infuriating air of simplicity. “Unless you have another explanation?”

“Well maybe I just slept with someone who I _didn’t_ pay. Ever consider that?”

“Of course. But if that were the case, it is unlikely they would have left before I did this morning.”

Will deflated, running a hand through his hair and over his face. He swayed, reaching for the gilded light fixture again. “Where did you go before I woke up?”

Hannibal fixed him with an unreadable look, head tilted slightly. “I went to speak to the front desk.”

“And?”

“This is their most exclusive honeymoon suite. I believe I may have paid five-thousand for it.”

Will groaned. “ _Honeymoon suite._ Yeah, that checks out.”

“It does, as you say, _check out._ And so should we, as soon as possible.”

“What about this mess?” Will gestured miserably to the wreck they’d made of the room. “And the—” he pointed to the bathroom, “—Denny White?”

“Ah, yes. We’ll have to see to that immediately. Can’t risk the cleaner happening upon such a gruesome and barbaric scene.”

Will turned to lean his forehead against the wall. He groaned. “What about the fucking _dogs?_ ”

“Will.” Hannibal’s hand fell on his shoulder and he winced as the fabric of his shirt shifted against some of the deeper scratches. “We will figure this out. But first—”

“First _what?_ Where do we start with this, Hannibal?”

Hannibal squeezed his shoulder, then stepped back and away, down the hall to the living room. “Breakfast,” he said briskly, “is as good a place to start as any.”

Feeling more sore, confused, and dejected than he could remember being in years, Will followed Hannibal. “I’ll need to get food for the dogs,” he said.

“We’ll make sure to bring them back something good.” Hannibal’s tone held a hint of sympathy and conviction. “Don’t worry, Will. Everything will work out in the end. It always does.”

“Past results aren’t necessarily indicative of future outcomes,” Will muttered. But he didn’t argue further. Resigned to his fate, he let Hannibal lead him out of their room— _the honeymoon suite, Jesus Christ,_ Will’s traitorous mind reminded him—and into the lavishly-wallpapered hall beyond. 

“Everything will be fine,” Hannibal repeated as he checked that the door locked behind them. “You should stop worrying so much.”

Before Will could lay into him for this blasé comment, Hannibal strode off down the hall toward the elevators, running slender fingers through his silver-blonde hair and looking for all the world like the most confident man alive.

 _Fuck,_ Will thought hazily as he trailed after. _What the fuck did we do last night?_

Following Hannibal onto the elevator, a second, better question occurred to him:

_Do I even wanna know?_

The answer, he guessed, was _no._ He absolutely, totally, inescapably, one-hundred percent did _not_ want to know. But he didn’t exactly have a choice. So he kept on keeping on, as he always did, and tried not to think too much about just how easily everything could go to shit.

As if it hadn’t already. 

_This is it,_ Will thought as Hannibal pressed the ‘lobby floor’ button and the elevator descended with a jerk. _This is how Jack and the FBI will find us: covered in bites and bruises, missing most our buttons, with a dead president and eight dogs in our hotel room. Just fucking great._

The elevator opened. Hannibal stepped into the luxurious lobby. Will hesitated for a long moment, considering letting the elevator close and returning to the hotel room out of spite, before realizing he didn’t have a key card. Sighing heavily, he stepped over the threshold onto white marble tiles threaded with veins of gold. 

“Fine,” he muttered. “Fuck it. What do I have to lose?”

The answer was, of course, ‘my life’, but he tried not to dwell on that. Instead he focused all his righteous irritation on Hannibal’s back, as if he could burn a hole straight through that ridiculous black dress shirt with the heat of his gaze alone. Hannibal, for his part, didn’t seem to notice Will’s psychic attempt to burn him alive. Which was probably for the best—after all, Will would rather strangle him properly than murder him mentally. Which, if this—if _any_ of this—was Hannibal’s fault (and there was an extraordinarily high chance most of it was), Will most certainly would.

They managed to cross the lobby without incident. It wasn’t until they were outside, where valets and bellhops were ushering guests and their fancy cars through a roundabout into stacked parking garages, that a man in an elegant valet’s uniform flagged them down.

“Officers!” he said, smile bright as the late-morning sun. “Would you like me to bring your car down for you?”

Will coughed into his hand to hide his discomfort. Hannibal, of course, was unphased and unruffled. Smiling graciously, he said, “If you would be so kind,” and the valet hared away at once to the garage.

“We should go,” Will hissed as soon as the valet was out of sight.

“No.” Hannibal put a steadying hand on Will’s shoulder. Will shrugged it off, glowering at him. 

“Why not?”

“Because we are trying to solve a mystery, Will. And the best way to do that is to collect evidence in order to reconstruct the events that led to this moment. And this car, I would say, most definitely falls under the umbrella of ‘evidence’. Wouldn’t you?”

“What car?” Will said. “What fucking car?”

“Here you are, Officers!” The valet pulled up, leaning out the car’s window, grinning broadly. “Just as you left her. A few dents and scratches, but those were already there, right? I guess it’s a rough city for law enforcement, ha ha!” And with that he stepped out of the car, leaving the driver’s side door open, and bowed first to Hannibal, then to Will. “Happy to help, of course!”

Will stared at the car as Hannibal paid the valet with a wad of cash that, apparently, he had stashed in the pockets of his dress slacks, with open mortification and distress.

“That’s a cop car,” he said once the valet was gone. “That’s an actual real LVPD squad car.”

“So it is,” said Hannibal, with the same detached (and slightly amused) air as when Will had showed him the dead president’s mutilated body. “Would you like to see what’s inside?”

“No,” said Will. “But we have to, don’t we?”

“Yes. I’ll drive.” Without waiting for Will to concede or argue, Hannibal slid into the driver’s seat. “Get in, Will. Let’s go wrangle up some breakfast.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally wrote this, didn't edit a word, and posted it, so it's probably full of typos and shit but it's a holiday weekend and I'm buzzed as hell and riding the high of seeing Tr*mp's shitty new poll numbers so it's whatever. Love you all!


	3. Back to the Beginning

****

**Chapter Three**

Curled in the passenger seat with his aching head resting against the window, rubbing absently at the bite mark on his throat, Will waited for Hannibal to break the silence. Hannibal remained stubbornly mute, staring out through the cracked windshield with both hands steady on the wheel. 

“So,” Will said, giving up on silence. He was too jittery to pretend everything was fine. “Where are you taking us?”

Hannibal glanced at him, then back out at the road. The traffic outside the hotel—Caesar’s Palace, Will realized, and groaned internally—was thick and congealed as old blood. The front entry of the hotel, made of several tiered roofs held up by Greco-Roman-style columns, was deceptively plain compared to the Palace’s interior. Guests with heavy bags milled around outside the lobby, admiring the white marble statues of rearing horses and old vases surrounding the fountain. 

“Hannibal,” Will said, tone sharp and biting. His headache was getting worse, and with it, his temper. “Where the fuck are we going?”

Hannibal didn’t respond for a long moment—long enough for Will to decide he was ignoring him on purpose. He was trying to think of a suitably devastating remark when Hannibal said, voice calm and pleasant as ever, “Do you have your phone?” 

“Um.” Will patted his pockets, then winced, shaking his head. “No. No phone.”

“Can you remember if you had one prior to our arrival at the hotel?”

“I... no. My memory is a blank. You might as well ask me how the President ended up in the bathtub.”

“I did mean to ask you,” Hannibal said, turning the police cruiser onto a less-congested side street, “but I assumed, based on the vacant look on your face when I entered the bathroom, that you didn’t remember a thing.”

“Vacant...? Listen, I would bet everything I own that you got me into this, not the other way around.”

“Then it is a good thing you have few possessions.” Hannibal took a left, then a right, passing luxurious hotels, clubs, and the occasional severely overpriced restaurant. “It would be cavalier of you to place the blame entirely on me, Will. I believe the part you played in this was significantly larger than you’re giving yourself credit for.”

“I don’t want credit for any of this.” Will crossed his arms, turning to stare out the window. The city of Las Vegas was blindingly bright in the midday light, sunbeams glancing off skyscraper windows and dancing with neon signs. “What a fucking mess.”

“I agree,” Hannibal said, “that the aesthetic appeal of this city is lacking. And that would be putting it kindly.”

“Not the city,” Will said, graduating from ‘annoyed’ to ‘pissed off’. “This.” He gestured between them. “Us.”

Hannibal shot him a wounded look, as if he wasn’t (as far as Will was concerned) fully responsible for their predicament. “The fault doesn’t lie with us. Not the current versions of ourselves, at least. We were drugged, Will. Someone did this to us; the consequences of our actions while under the influence of intoxicants cannot be accurately or entirely attributed to us in our sober state.”

“It’s not about whether or not it’s our fault,” Will said, putting inescapable emphasis on ‘our’. “It’s about whether or not we can figure out enough to get out of here before the cops find us. Or worse, the FBI. Or even the fucking Secret Service... we killed the President, Hannibal. That’s not just something you shake off. Especially when you’re, uh, you’re still...” He trailed off, shaking his head as another wave of nausea overwhelmed him. He pinched his nose with two fingers, breathing slowly in through his nose and out through his mouth. “Fuck me,” he muttered.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hannibal smile—just a faint twitch of the lips, but unmistakable. “I believe I already have,” he said, “but until we can reconstruct the circumstances under which that union occurred—”

“Union?” Will said, aghast and disbelieving. “Can you please, just for once, stop trying to... to distance yourself from the reality of a situation by...”

“By what, Will?”

“Strategically selecting vocabulary,” Will finished, knowing in that moment just how childish he sounded. Sighing, he ran both hands through his hair, untangling curls stuck together with traces of blood and sweat. “Forget it. Can we just... let’s just forget the whole thing, okay?”

Hannibal signaled, then turned onto a busier street. He was silent for a long moment, and then, “We can’t solve this puzzle by ignoring its pieces, Will. One way or another, we will have to remember everything.”

Will rubbed his forehead, wincing. “Pretty sure that’s gonna be impossible. So far nothing’s coming back. It’s possible that, whatever happened last night, it’s gone forever.”

“Then reconstruct it in your imagination,” Hannibal said, as if he were making a drink recommendation rather than suggesting that Will (who was already in an emotionally delicate state) vividly reimagine the most-likely-damning events of the night before. “You always say you can take on anyone’s perspective, so surely taking on your own should be, as they say, a piece of cake.”

“You know what’s not a piece of cake? Being stuck in a stolen police cruiser with a cannibalistic serial killer in the middle of Las Vegas. And on top of that—as if that wasn’t enough for a thousand lifetimes—I’m starving. If we don’t find a place to eat soon, I’m going to start cannibalizing myself.”

Hannibal shot him an amused look. “Our stomach acid is constantly digesting our bodies’ own cells. Do you consider that cannibalism?”

“I take it back,” said Will. “I’ll eat you instead.”

“I would like to see you try.”

Will gave him a sweeping look, clenching one hand so tight his nails bit into his palm. “I genuinely can’t tell if that was a challenge or an observation.”

Hannibal turned to look at him for a moment. There was a hint of mischief there, and beneath that, something darker. “It was both.” He turned back to the road, taking one more turn before pulling into a (very crowded) parking lot outside what looked like a French bistro. “But perhaps another day. For now, could I interest you in a less violent alternative?”

“Perhaps,” Will said, undoing his seatbelt and opening the passenger door. “But someday, I’m taking you up on that challenge.”

Hannibal smiled like a shark that’s scented blood. “I’m looking forward to it. Until then, let me buy you breakfast.”

. . .

The French bistro was small and charming, but the price tags attached to even the most affordable dining options were not. Will read the whole menu (novel-like in its veracious descriptions of decadence and extravagance) three times over before concluding that yes, the cheapest breakfast item was in fact twenty-five dollars. And that was without sides.

“Hannibal. How in the hell do you expect to pay for this stuff?”

“How did I pay for our honeymoon suite at Caesar’s Palace?” Hannibal replied, expression relaxed and voice even. “Although I’m not entirely certain of its origins, I found a significant quantity of money in our hotel room.” He patted the pocket of his dress pants for emphasis. “I believe it may have come from an emergency cache I left here a few years back. I had a small fortune in gambling chips hidden away in the desert—the coordinates of which only I am aware—to be traded in for cash if I should ever have need of it.”

“That’s why we came to Las Vegas in the first place,” Will realized, and Hannibal inclined his head. 

“That would be my guess.”

“Your guess. So you really don’t remember shit.”

“We are equal in our ignorance.” Hannibal placed a hand on Will’s shoulder. Will’s first instinct was to shake it off, but he didn’t want to cause a scene and draw attention. “Now. What would you like to eat?”

“Anything I want?”

“Anything at all. And while we eat, I would like to go over our longer-term goals and plans.”

“Meaning?”

“Where do we go from here?” Hannibal lifted a hand and put on a charming smile, and (to no one’s surprise, least of all Will’s) a waiter appeared immediately at their table.

“What can I get for you today?” The man’s smile was almost as bright as his hair, which was dyed an atrocious shade of neon yellow. Will caught Hannibal’s grimace and stifled a burst of laughter. As Hannibal ordered coffee and something unpronouncably French, Will found himself wondering what Hannibal would do if Will dyed his own hair that color. Eat him, probably. 

The neon-haired waiter turned to Will next, and he ordered chicken and waffles just to see the look of affront on Hannibal’s usual composed face. 

“So.” Will leaned in, elbows on the (very fancy and polished) table, as the waiter walked away. The bistro was full of other people, their chatter loud and raucous as crows. The perfect cover for recounting less-than-legal events. “What do we know so far? Between the two of us.”

Hannibal gave Will a disappointed look. “You could have ordered anything on the menu, you know.”

“I got what I wanted. Now c’mon, you’re the one who wants to solve this puzzle so bad.”

“Badly. ‘Bad’ is an adjective used to modify nouns and pronouns, while ‘badly’ is an adverb used to modify verbs. ‘To solve’ is a verb.”

“Hannibal. Stop correcting my grammar and help me out here.”

“What do you need help with? We have already established our mutual amnesia.”

“Walk me through everything you know, from the last thing you remember before waking up this morning up until now. Step by step.”

Hannibal fixed Will with a look that plainly said ‘figure it out yourself’, but after an excruciatingly long staredown, he leaned back in his chair and set his hands in his lap, taking on a thoughtful air. “Do you remember the restaurant in Cuba?”

Will sat back, too, mirroring Hannibal’s stance. He took a packet of jam from the dispenser on the table and peeled back the lid, reaching for a spoon. Hannibal’s eyes tracked his movements, a hint of disdain on his face. Before he could comment, Will replied, “Yes. That’s the last thing I remember.”

“And the bounty hunters?”

“Yeah.”

“After that?”

“Nothing.”

A long silence, broken only by the clang of cups on wooden tables and the tinkling laughter of a young couple sitting nearby. 

“I remember slightly more than you do, it seems.” Hannibal tilted his head slightly, pensive look deepening. “Should I recount it all in order?”

“God, please.” Will finished eating the jam packet and set it aside. He leaned back in, planting his elbows on the table and fixing Hannibal with his most intense, ‘you better do it now or else’ stare. 

“As you wish,” said Hannibal. And he started to explain.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's so fucking smoky here I wanna go outside for even one (1) minutes but I can't @god fight me you heinous bastard (but at least being double-quarantined means more time to write! haha! HAHahahHAHAH! I'm losing my mind!! :D)


	4. The Certificate

****

**Chapter Four**

“I will start before the restaurant in Cuba,” Hannibal said, then paused for an obnoxiously long time to sip at his coffee. Or maybe ‘coffee’ was too blasé a word for it. _Café Viennois sans crème ni sucre_ was what Hannibal had ordered, and although Will’s comprehension of French was negligible at best, he knew enough to appreciate that this was most likely the most expensive non-alcoholic drink on the menu.

“And then?” Will prompted, reaching for another jam packet. 

Hannibal set his coffee down with dainty precision. “We arrived around 7:30PM Eastern Standard Time at _La Guarida_ , where I intended to…” He trailed off, tilted his head to one side, and took another contemplative sip of Café Viennois. “I had plans to make a special evening of it. But we had only just finished the first course when I became aware that there were several men sitting at the table by the door who appeared to be carrying concealed weapons.”

Will swallowed hard. “The bounty hunters.”

“Yes. The same ones we believed may have been following us the week before.”

Will shook his head, dropping the empty jam packet onto his napkin. The raspberry puree stained the white linen like blood on a marble floor. “We lost them in Santa Clara. There’s no way—”

“Apparently there is a way, Will, as they managed to find us again.” Hannibal’s tone was sharp, inviting no further argument. Will considered arguing anyway just to be difficult, but before he could properly weigh the pros and cons of further provoking Hannibal, the waiter reappeared with their breakfast and the topic was temporarily dropped for subtlety’s sake. 

Deprived of his chance to verbally antagonize Hannibal for snapping at him, Will resorted to eating his chicken and waffles with as much gusto and as few manners as possible. He made a point of avoiding catching Hannibal’s eye, observing the disdainful looks sent his way in his peripheral vision. Meanwhile, Hannibal seemed to be making a show of behaving as properly as possible—which, given that no one was paying attention to him (except Will, who was faking indifference), was both unnecessary and non-conducive to a pleasant eating experience. After all, Will thought, no one in their right mind could possibly enjoy taking that much time to spread butter on a croissant, or carefully cutting into a poached egg on bread so that the spilled yoke didn’t touch the plate. 

“For fuck’s sake,” Will muttered when a full three minutes had passed without a word from either of them. He looked up, catching Hannibal’s eye, and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. He cleared his throat.

Hannibal gave him an unreadable look. “Do you want something in particular?” When Will didn’t reply, he tilted his head, haughty and aloof, and brought a carefully-cut bite of egg and bread to his lips. “If so, I would suggest using your words, Will. You can’t expect me to read your mind.” He put the bite in his mouth, eyes half-lidded and expression one of deep consideration. 

Will fought the urge to slap the fork out of his hand or something equally immature and unpleasant. He barely won over the urge, which increased with every stupid smug look that flashed across Hannibal’s stupid smug face. Instead, he leaned in again and said, “I remember being at the restaurant. You haven’t told me anything new. So keep talking.” _Use your words,_ he added mentally. But he wanted to hear the rest of the story more than he wanted to fight. Not that Hannibal would consider it a fight; the last time Will had called one of their arguments a fight (or more accurately, a ‘battle of wits’) Hannibal had said, _“I wouldn’t consider this a battle of wits, Will. Not when my opponent is so poorly armed.”_ Which had led to a much more physical encounter that neither had walked away from unscathed. 

There was another long silence. Then, “We were cornered,” Hannibal said. “They had positioned sentries at the back door and windows. We were unarmed, and they had enough firepower to kill us even if we were. We were outnumbered five to one.”

“So we were arrested?”

“Yes. I remember being cuffed and watching them cuff you. I was sure they would separate us, but they didn’t. We were loaded into a car waiting outside the restaurant. I had hoped an opportunity to escape would present itself, but…” He faded off, then took another bite of egg and toast. “They were skilled, and careful. They knew who we were, and never once let their guard drop. The impossibility of escape through physical means quickly became apparent.”

Will poured more syrup on his waffles, mixing it with the butter. “What about non-physical means?”

“I assumed that the best way to cope with the situation—our best hope of emerging free and unscathed—was to lull them into a state of security and complacency. Or, in the event that my escape became impossible, to convince our captors that you were under my influence and had not been acting of your own conscious volition.”

It took a moment, but then understanding crashed over Will and he jolted forward, clutching his fork like a weapon. “You drugged me. You knew we were about to be apprehended, so you drugged me at dinner. That’s why you remember being arrested and I don’t.”

“A temporary and non-invasive drug meant to dull your senses and decrease your tendency for reckless, violent behavior. The sort of thing a captor would give his captive in a situation where mindless obedience and cooperation were imperative.”

Will exhaled, some of the fight leaving his body, and slumped back. “You wanted to give me plausible deniability.”

Hannibal smiled. Thin, brief, and bittersweet. “Yes.”

Will ran a hand through his hair. “You were already working on my defense. I shoulda guessed. You’re always at least two moves ahead.”

“I knew that, should we be captured with no hope of escape, my life was forfeit. Yours didn’t have to be.”

For a long moment, Will couldn’t think of anything to say to that. The silence went on long enough that he decided not to say anything at all. Awkwardly clearing his throat, he finished his breakfast and pushed his plate away, closing his eyes to collect himself. “And after that?”

“My memory is fragmented and unreliable. I believe they may have rendered us unconscious for the duration of our flight back to the States, out of an abundance of caution.”

“Smart,” Will muttered, thinking about the fates of Hannibal’s previous foes. Giving Hannibal even the slightest chance of escape was practically an assurance of destruction, in Will’s experience.

Hannibal smiled again. “Yes, it was. For many reasons, not just their own physical safety. I believe they were protecting themselves legally as well. After all, Cuba doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S. government, so it would have been a quasi-legal operation to return us to American soil. We were most likely smuggled out in the cargo hold of a private plane. If the Cuban government had learned of our presence, they may have tried to take credit for our capture themselves.”

“That would’ve really pissed off Jack,” Will said. He ran his hand through his hair again, sighing. “I wonder if he would’ve bought my innocence, if we’d tried to sell it.”

“I believe,” Hannibal said, finishing off his coffee and setting his cup aside, “that Jack Crawford is so desperate to be right about you that he may still buy your innocence if only to keep from facing the fact that he misjudged you so completely.”

“He didn’t misjudge me, he just…”

“Just what, Will?”

“He was blinded by his obsession with catching you. And he knew that he’d need me to do it. So he willfully ignored the signs of my shifting loyalties and continued to put misplaced faith in my commitment to the greater good.”

Hannibal gave him a searching look. Will felt like a butterfly in a glass box, shifting uncomfortably, pinned through the chest and immobilized. “And what about your commitment to the greater good, Will? What do you consider the greater good?”

“There is no good or evil,” Will replied. “You said it yourself. It’s all shades of grey. We decide what’s acceptable or not; society dictates the baseline of morality. Some of us choose to shoe that line. Others step across it.”

“Yes.” Hannibal finished his egg and toast, taking a moment before spearing a slice of peach and lifting it to his lips. Will watched him eat it, realizing a moment too late that he was staring. Clearing his throat awkwardly, he looked down and away. He felt Hannibal’s burning gaze on him as he ducked his head slightly, pretending to be interested in the elegant swirling designs embroidered into the lacy centerpiece in the middle of the table.

Another long, charged silence passed. This time it was Hannibal who broke it.

“Well,” he said, dabbing at his mouth with the corner of a pristine cloth napkin, “we should be on our way. There are many more mysteries for us to uncover, and it would be prudent not to wait for the police to uncover them first.”

Will snorted. “Yeah, fat chance of that. I bet the LVPD has more than enough to deal with without worrying about whatever we did last night.”

“Remember what’s in the bathtub, Will,” Hannibal said. Before Will could reply, Hannibal added, “We can’t be sure what else we did. We are both entirely capable of wreaking havoc worthy of notice even in the City of Sin.”

Will sighed. He ran a hand over his face, pressing his fingers to his temples as his head throbbed. “You’re right. We need to figure out what happened.”

Hannibal fished around in the pocket of his pants and extracted another roll of cash. He glanced at the menu, eyes flickering over the prices next to the dishes they had ordered, then counted out the bills and added a generous tip. Standing, he moved toward the door with slightly more grace than he had in the hotel room; apparently the effects of whatever drugs, alcohol, or drugs-and-alcohol they’d consumed were finally wearing off for him. 

Pushing his chair back and almost falling over in the process, Will just wished he could say the same.

Once they were back in the police cruiser, Will slumped in his seat, rubbing at his temples again. Hannibal shot him a sympathetic look. “Headache?”

Will nodded. “Yeah. It’s getting worse.”

“Then we should accomplish as much as we can before you become even more incapacitated,” Hannibal said with brusque practicality. “We should begin by searching the car. It’s possible we left evidence that could help us piece together the events of last night.”

“Glove box,” Will said, leaning forward to pop it open. He pressed the release button and the door fell forward, revealing the compartment built into the dash. As he’d expected, it was full of papers. He pulled them out and rifled through them. _Registrations, maintenance manuals, spare tire replacement instructions, and…_ He stopped dead, staring at the paper at the bottom of the pile. “ _Certificate of Marriage_ ,” he read aloud. “ _State of Nevada, Clark County. This is to Certify that the undersigned Officiant Derek R. Smith did on the 13 rd day of February A.D. 2017 join in lawful Wedlock Hannibal Lecter and William Graham…_” He trailed off as a mixture of disbelief and dread washed over him. He knew Hannibal was looking at him, but he couldn’t bring himself to look back. Then again, if this silence lasted any longer, he was pretty sure he would combust from embarrassment. 

Wordlessly, Hannibal took the certificate. After a few seconds, he handed it back. “It is an authentic document,” he said. Only the faintest strain in his tone betrayed his emotions. “In the eyes of the law, we are married.”

That was the final straw for Will, who shoved the papers back in the glovebox and slammed it as if that could undo the discovery he’d made. Turning to Hannibal, he said, breathless with the beginning of real panic, “In the eyes of the law we’re _serial killers,_ Hannibal! Serial killers who gave a stranger their real names. Somewhere out there, there’s a person— _people,_ fuck, we had to have witnesses sign—who know we’re in Vegas.”

Hannibal inhaled sharply. “Give me the certificate,” he said. “We need to find these people and make sure they haven’t reported us to the police. Which is likely, since I haven’t seen our faces on any billboards or screens yet. Have you?”

Will calmed down slightly at this, shaking his head. “No. There was some kind of drug-cartel-related massacre they were reporting on when I woke up this morning, but nothing about us.”

Hannibal put a hand on Will’s shoulder and smiled. “Good. Then we have time to remedy this before things get out of control.”

“ _Get out of control_? Are you serious? Things are so far beyond ‘out of control’ that putting the word ‘control’ in the same sentence as ‘things’ is tantamount to…” He trailed off, burying his face in his hands. “I don’t know. Something bad. I can’t think for shit right now, fuck.”

Hannibal didn’t reply. Instead, he started the car and pulled back onto the road. “Look up the names on the certificate, Will. We have a new lead. Let’s follow it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretty sure finding out you married your cannibal serial killer psychiatrist while wasted in Vegas is up there in the Top Ten Things No One Wants To Find Out Ever. F in the chat for Will lmao


	5. The Crystal Chapel

****

**Chapter Five**

“The _Crystal Chapel,_ ” Will read aloud as he scrolled through search results on Hannibal’s phone. His search for ‘Las Vegas quick marriage chapels’ had returned a multitude of results, but only one run by a Mr. Derek R. Smith, officiator and owner of the establishment since 1996.

“Yes,” Hannibal said, glancing over at Will before returning his full attention to the road. “That sounds right.”

“Sounds right?” Will tried not to sound too hopeful. “Do you remember something?”

Hannibal frowned, eyebrows contracting into an expression of gentle contemplation. “ _Remember_ is not quite the right term. I would say it’s more of a feeling.”

“You _feel_ this is right. We were at the _Crystal Chapel_ last night. We got… we had the ceremony there.”

Hannibal shot him a sideways look. “Yes. We got married there.”

“Oh, God. Don’t say it out loud.” Will looked away, back out the window, but not before he caught a flash of hurt on Hannibal’s face. If he had been in a more forgiving mood, he may have apologized or softened the blow in some way. But he had a headache, amnesia, a split lip, a bruised eye, and scratches and bite marks all over his neck and back, so all in all was feeling more biblically vengeful than remorseful.

After a long, awkward silence, Hannibal asked, “Where are we going, Will? You will have to guide me.”

Will switched over to Google Maps and typed in the address of the _Crystal Chapel._ It popped up a few miles away. “Great,” he said, zooming out to get a better look at the route they would have to take. “Traffic.”

“Yes, it’s a big city.” Hannibal was back to his infuriatingly calm and rational tone and expression. “We should expect delays everywhere, especially during commuter hours.”

Will shook the phone to realign the marker on the map. “Okay, you’ll wanna take a left up here.”

Hannibal nodded, gliding into the turn lane and executing a perfect ninety-degree maneuver onto a much larger and busier street. Despite the congestion, he managed to insinuate the police cruiser into traffic without issue, sliding between a pickup and a sedan. Will watched with a twinge of jealousy. No matter the situation or circumstances, Hannibal always knew how to blend in. Even driving a stolen police cruiser covered in scratches and dents, his complete absence of concern or anxiety seemed to calm those around him. For Will, however, it did exactly the opposite. After all, evolution had gifted humanity with anxiety for a reason. And that reason most definitely extended to being stranded in a hostile country while a notoriously resourceful and well-funded government agency launched an all-out manhunt for you. Which Will assumed was the case. After all, no one escaped police custody, kidnapped and killed the president, and got away with it without raising a commotion. Thankfully, someone else had caused a more local commotion last night, which helped divert attention. As long as no one recognized them, Will told himself firmly, they would be okay. 

. . .

When they pulled into the parking lot of the _Crystal Chapel,_ a man standing outside the chapel waved at them with the enthusiasm of a long-lost friend. He jogged over, dropping the cigarette in his hand, and slapped the hood of the police cruiser as Hannibal slid into an empty parking space. 

“Well, damn!” the man said, and slapped the car again, this time nailing the dented mirror. Even muffled by the window, his voice was loud and brash. “How’s married life, you crazy sons of bitches?”

From the expression on Hannibal’s face, Will ascertained that he had never been called a crazy son of a bitch before. He wondered if he should fear for this exuberant stranger’s life, then decided that, all things considered, he couldn’t care less. If Hannibal decided to impulsively kill Mr. Derek R. Smith, officiant and owner of the _Crystal Chapel,_ in broad daylight outside the Crystal Chapel itself, there wasn’t much he could do. Besides, their lives were already fucked beyond recognition. Charging Hannibal Lecter with one more murder was like denting a wrecked car. Sure, it added to the damage, but would anyone really notice?

Fortunately, Hannibal seemed to collect himself before opening the car door and stepping outside. He put on his usual pleasant smile, the kind hiding darkness only Will could see. “Mr. Smith,” Hannibal said, clearly having come to the same conclusion about the man’s identity. “A pleasure to see you again. I see that you are experiencing a midday lull in business. Would you mind giving my… husband and me a moment of your time?”

Mr. Smith bent at the waist to look into the car, grinning at Will. “Of course, of course! I imagine you have questions about the ceremony. You were both pretty out of it. Thought you might’ve been drugged, the way you were acting! I’ve seen enough drunk people to know when it’s gone beyond that, and you two were _way_ beyond that. But don’t worry,” he added, tapping the side of his nose and winking, “I’m a very discreet man. Any illegal activities my valued costumers engage in inside or outside of my chapel are none of my business.”

As he stepped out of the car, slamming the door with a little too much force, Will found himself wondering if Mr. Smith’s don’t ask don’t tell policy extended to mass murder. He had the feeling it did, if only for the sake of self-preservation. Snitching on a notorious serial killer (or two) was up there on the list of Ways To Die Very Quickly And Horribly, and Mr. Smith didn’t seem like the altruistic type. In fact, it was possible even now that the officiant knew who they were—they’d given their real names, after all—and was too scared to report them. _Smart move,_ Will thought. _If Hannibal thought he was a threat, he’d already be dead._ Even drunk and/or drugged, he was sure Hannibal wouldn’t have let a liability go. Even if excessive alcohol consumption temporarily lowered intelligence, someone with Hannibal’s IQ (somewhere between 140 and 150, Will estimated) would hardly be affected severely enough to make a blunder of that size. 

“Please, come on in, come in.” Mr. Smith waved a hand at the chapel. The parking lot was practically empty; Will guessed most people weren’t interested in having a mid-morning Vegas wedding. Which worked in their favor—after all, the last thing he wanted was more people looking at him, his scrapes and bruises, and especially his scars. Hannibal had a distinctive and distinguished look that set him apart from most Americans, but Will’s visible scars marked him just as clearly. And when they were together, even the most nearsighted onlookers could identify them. If the wrong person saw them at the wrong time and called it in, it was all over. 

Trying not to let his nerves show, Will stuck his hands in the pockets of his pants. As he did, he felt something smooth and metallic against his fingertips. Frowning, he dug it out and held it up to the sunlight. _A ring._ His heart dropped like a stone. _A real gold ring._

“Hey, Hannibal?” He kept his voice low as he caught up to Hannibal just outside the chapel. Mr. Smith bounded ahead like an overeager puppy, throwing the chapel doors open and gesturing for them to follow. 

Hannibal put a hand on Will’s shoulder, steadying him. It was only then that Will realized he was off-balance, blinking rapidly as the ground sloped suddenly under his feet. He grabbed Hannibal’s arm until everything settled back into place. “Shit.” He rubbed at his temple, grimacing. “You don’t think I have a concussion, do you?”

“It’s possible,” said Hannibal. “Once we’ve finished our business with Mr. Smith, I can evaluate you more thoroughly.” He took Will’s hand, pulling him toward the open doors. “Shall we?”

Will pulled away. He immediately regretted it as the world spun, and, to his irritation and embarrassment, was forced to grab Hannibal again to stay upright. “I found a ring,” he said as Hannibal looped an arm around his waist to keep him from ditching face-first onto the gum-covered pavement. “In my pocket. A wedding ring. A real gold wedding ring that I’m pretty sure you gave me last night.”

“Are you sure,” Hannibal said, leading Will through the doors as Mr. Smith yelled impatiently over his shoulder, “that it’s not your other wedding ring?”

Will gave him a dirty look. “You mean the one Molly gave me? You know very well I threw that into the Atlantic.”

“You told me that you did. I never saw you do it.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Hannibal, why would I keep it?”

Before Hannibal could reply, Mr. Smith reappeared in front of them, smile too white, wearing a flashy black-sequined vest. “I confirmed that there won’t be any ceremonies happening until this evening, so I’m all yours. Why don’t we go into the back room and talk this out?”

Will and Hannibal exchanged a glance. “By all means,” Hannibal said. “Lead the way.”

. . .

The chapel itself was ostentatious at best and tacky at worst, but the room that Mr. Smith referred to as The Cave was relatively small and normal looking. There was a Victoria’s Secret models calendar behind the desk, a stack of blank marriage certificates just like the one they’d found in the police cruiser, and a closet full of cheap suits and white dresses. “For the unprepared,” Mr. Smith said, catching Will staring. “Some people do it spur of the moment, you know. Like you two! Like I said, you were out of your minds last night. You especially.” He pointed at Will with a grin. “Which is why I expected to see you again today. Plenty of people rush into marriages, and just as many rush right out again. Which I’m guessing is why you’re here? To get a divorce?”

Will startled. “Divorce? No, not… I mean, _yeah, technically_ , but we were never… we weren’t even together. We must’ve done it as a joke. Right?” He elbowed Hannibal in the ribs, trying to look amused instead of pissed off. Because this _had_ to have been Hannibal’s doing, right?

“Oh, that’s odd,” said Mr. Smith, frowning. “You were all over him last night!” He chuckled. “But I do see my share of pranksters in here. Although not many of them spend as much as you—” he pointed at Hannibal, “—did on your fake wedding.” 

“I imagine I bought a suit befitting the occasion?” Hannibal, unlike Will, managed to sound properly amused. Will refused to look at him, knowing he would see either sadness or anger behind that amusement, and not prepared to face either. “And one for my husband-to-be as well?”

Mr. Smith nodded. “Oh, yeah. Boy did you ever. When I saw the price tags on those things, wowee! I half expected you to still be wearing them when you rolled up today. If I dropped that much cash on an outfit, I’d never take it off.”

Will, who was thinking about the frankly obscene wad of cash Hannibal had stuffed in his pockets right now, almost missed Mr. Smith’s next question, which was aimed at him. 

“So do you want to divorce him or not?” Mr. Smith said, pointing first at Will, then at Hannibal. “Because you can’t get back what you paid for the ceremony and license. But I’d be happy to undo what’s been done, for a price, of course.”

“Of course,” said Hannibal, with a slightly condescending smile. “Would you give me a moment alone with my husband? I would like to discuss this in private. It is, after all, a rather momentous decision.”

 _No, it’s not,_ Will wanted to say. _We got drunk, either you or someone else drugged me, and then we impulsively got married either as a joke or because, for some godforsaken reason, we chose last night to get together. So let’s just get this over with and get back to escaping from the FBI, please?_

What he actually said was, “Exactly how legally binding are Las Vegas chapel weddings?”

“Oh!” Mr. Smith looked slightly offended. “As legal as a big to-do destination wedding in Tahiti, as far as the U.S. government is concerned. Joint taxes, gentlemen! There’re benefits to being married that go beyond true love. Although,” he continued, scratching at his shaven chin, “if your vows were anything to go by, I wouldn’t rule out true love.”

Hannibal looked curious, and Will, who was very much not interested in hearing about their True Love Wedding Vows, changed the subject. “Hypothetically,” he said, “if you were to annul this wedding right now, would the U.S. government ever become officially notified in any way, shape, or form that it happened in the first place?”

The officiant shrugged. “You’ve got the license. You can wave that at whoever asks, and they’ll tell you you’re legally married. But I don’t think anyone’s gonna go digging through Clark County wedding records when hundreds of weddings happen in this city every day. Needle in a haystack, and all that.”

Will exhaled sharply. The tension in his shoulders faded slightly, and he nodded, wincing as the movement caused his head to throb viciously. “And if you annulled it? Would that make us stand out more in your records?”

Mr. Smith shrugged again. “Oh, I don’t know. Like I said, a lot of people change their minds. But getting a divorce within eight hours of getting married? Not that common, no.”

“Well, I think we should give this relationship a chance,” said Hannibal. His voice was honey-smooth, laced with a particular brand of seductive persuasiveness that never failed to convince the inconvincible. Will, however, had acquired a tentative immunity over months and years of exposure, and remained as annoyed and unconvinced as ever. 

“Fine.” Will sighed, running a hand through his hair. He became suddenly aware that Hannibal still had an arm around his waist and shifted away, clenching his jaw against the throbbing in his head. “Let’s give it a week. If we haven’t figured things out by then, we’ll annul it.” 

Hannibal shifted, just enough that Will could lean on him without admitting that that was what he was doing. “Yes. That sounds quite reasonable.”

Will laughed, slightly high-pitched and hysterical. “Reasonable,” he repeated, “yeah. That’s what this is.” And without bothering to thank the officiant or say goodbye, he turned and headed back to the car. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kept trying to post this last night but it wouldn't show up even though it said 5/? chapters and it wasn't showing up in the recently posted results either so I figured it hadn't actually posted?? I don't??? Know??? Anyway sorry to anyone who's subscribed and got multiple notices that I'd posted this yesterday!! AO3 is really out to get me this week I guess lmaooo
> 
> Honestly I barely got up the mental strength to write this chapter because the last few weeks kicked my ass so hard but I DID IT ANYWAY SO THERE lol


	6. Speculation and Reconstruction

****

**Chapter Six**

“Ow.” Will batted Hannibal’s hand away, wincing and dabbing gingerly at the cut on his head. “My skull’s not fractured or broken, if that’s what you’re checking for.”

Hannibal smiled slightly. He stood in front of Will as Will leaned against the cop car’s flank, one hand on Will’s shoulder, the other ghosting over the bruise around his eye. “No, it isn’t. Tilt your head back and look up; I would like to see if your pupils dilate properly.”

Sighing, Will threw his head back, resting it against the car. He squinted at the sky, watery sunlight filtering through a growing blanket of thin grey clouds. His head throbbed and he forced his eyes open, clenching and unclenching one hand, the gold ring held tight in the other. 

“Good.” Hannibal’s hand traveled down Will’s face, thumb skimming his jawline before settling against his throat. “Are there any other injuries you would like me to examine?”

“No,” said Will, too quickly. He jerked away, sliding along the side of the car to put some space between them. Hannibal watched him go, a tiny frown replacing the smile on his face. Sighing, Will ran a hand through his hair, gripping at it until it stung. He closed his eyes. All he wanted was to lie down and sleep for a year. Maybe two, if he could get away with it. But he couldn’t. Right now, he couldn’t even get away with a two-minute nap. Time was of the essence, and unless they wanted their little Vegas getaway to end in imprisonment and execution, they needed to figure this whole thing out before the authorities did. 

“Shall we?” Hannibal moved around to the driver’s side, opening the door and slipping inside with his usual cat-like grace. He turned on the engine and rolled down the passenger side window. “Will. Time is of the essence. You’ll have plenty of time to sleep later.”

Reluctantly, Will got in the car. Leaning back in his seat and taking a long, slow breath, he turned to Hannibal and said, “I hate it when you do that.”

Hannibal tilted his head, putting on a curious, innocent expression—as innocent as a man like Hannibal could put on, at least. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“I hate when you read my mind.”

Hannibal smiled. He pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the street. “I don’t read your mind, I study your body language and vocal tones and analyze them in the context of circumstances and situations. I simply interpret the cues, conscious and unconscious, that you provide me. Similar to what you do at crime scenes.”

Will didn’t grace him with a response. After a long and awkward silence, he said, “Where are we going now?”

“Back to Cesar’s Palace. The events at the _Crystal Chapel_ happened near the end of last night’s adventure. It’s likely that we will find more evidence back at the hotel.”

“How do you know?” Will started to ask, then realized: “That officiant said it’s uncommon for people to get divorced _eight hours_ after getting married. That would—” he checked the time on Hannibal’s phone, “—place the time of the ceremony at around 4AM this morning.”

“Clever boy.” Hannibal’s smile was evident in the slant of his words. “What time did you come to this morning?”

Will frowned, closing his eyes, reconstructing every detail of the room. “Late morning. Umm… there was a breaking news story on, something about a massacre in the desert. They said it happened in the hours of the early morning. That could mean anywhere from midnight until 6AM; because it happened at night in a remote location outside the city, it may have taken several hours for anyone to report it. Maybe longer; there was a police officer killed a few miles down the road who could’ve radioed it in, but was killed before he had the chance. Once discovered and reported, it would’ve been another few hours before press showed up to get the footage shown on the news. Which likely places the time of the massacre between 1AM and 3AM. The news story would’ve aired between 10AM and 11AM, which means I woke up around 10:30AM.”

When Will opened his eyes, Hannibal was looking at him with a shameless blend of pride, attraction, and satisfaction. “I returned to the room at 10:32,” Hannibal said. “I discovered you with the President’s body at 10:33.”

Titling his head back and staring at the ceiling of the car, Will nodded. “Okay.” His voice was rough, airway constricted by his awkward position. He cleared his throat. “So if the ceremony happened at 4AM and I woke up in the room at 10:30, that still means there’re six and a half missing hours in between. A lot can happen in six and a half hours, Hannibal.”

“I came to at 7AM,” said Hannibal. “Even if I only slept for half an hour, that still leaves just two and a half hours between the ceremony and the time I woke up at the hotel.”

“If you knew that, what was the point of putting me through a gold-medal-winning mental gymnastics routine?”

“I wanted to see if you could figure it out. And I was curious about the breaking news story concerning the desert massacre.”

Will turned to glare at him. When that failed to elicit a response, he slumped back in his seat, sighing heavily. “Why didn’t you wake me up? I thought you said you just went to talk to the front desk. What else did you get up to while I was unconscious?”

“Asleep,” Hannibal corrected. “You were asleep, Will. That was the first thing I checked. However, when you didn’t respond to my voice, I decided it was kinder to let you sleep. I believe you are correct in saying we were drugged, or that we drugged ourselves—”

“Or _you_ drugged _me,_ ” Will muttered.

“—And letting you sleep it off was the healthier and more humane option,” Hannibal continued as if he hadn’t heard him. 

“Humane?” Will crossed his arms. As he did, he became uncomfortably aware of the ring, still clutched tight in one hand, the metal slick with sweat. He considered rolling down the window and chucking it out, then thought better of it. It was evidence. Throwing away evidence was stupid, no matter how satisfying. “Your idea of _humane_ and the one typically accepted by society don’t usually line up, Hannibal.”

Turning left onto a quieter side street, Hannibal once again ignored Will’s barbed comments. His expression and posture remained infuriatingly relaxed, one hand resting on the wheel and the other in his lap. “It’s possible that something of note happened between the time we got married and the time we returned to the hotel, but—and I think you will agree—it may be easier to return to the beginning before attempting to comprehend the end.”

Although he wanted to keep arguing, Will had to agree. He sighed, running his free hand over his face, clenching his fist around the ring. “Okay. We get back to the hotel, go over everything we know, check on the dogs, and go from there.”

Hannibal tilted his head, acquiescing. “There is also the President’s body to consider.”

“Yeah, shit, right.” Will stared at a group of people hurrying by as rain began to fall, a faint sprinkling of desert rain tumbling from grey cloud cover. “We could always feed the President to the dogs.”

“Two birds with one stone.” Hannibal sounded far more pleased than he had any right to be. “An elegant solution to an inelegant situation.”

Will tried (and failed) not to feel pleased by Hannibal’s praise. Closing his eyes, he tucked the gold ring into his pocket and focused on the steady drumbeat of rain falling on the roof of the car, the steady pounding pain in his head finally beginning to fade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a completely inexplicable burst of creative inspiration this morning so I sat my ass down and wrote this chapter in a haze of desperation. It's short and unedited (like most things I write) but hopefully fulfills its function as a transitional chapter! :D As always, thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has left kudos or comments! I appreciate the support more than I can say!! <3


	7. The Pool Incident

****

**Chapter Seven**

They made it back to Cesar’s Palace without incident. The same valet offered to park the cruiser, but Hannibal politely declined. Will was again struck by how easily he interacted with those around him—effortless and suave, true nature hidden behind a charming smile and open posture. The valet retreated, looking disappointed but resigned, and Hannibal drove around the entry roundabout and into the layered parking garage. 

They parked the police cruiser in a remote corner of the garage, as far from other cars as possible. Will didn’t relax fully until the engine was off and the lights in the car dimmed, hiding their faces from any curious passers-by. He didn’t realize how wound up he was until he consciously released the stress tightening his shoulders (especially his right one, which had been through enough without being forced to remain tense for hours on end) and let his head drop back against the seat’s headrest. He felt Hannibal’s attention turn on him, sharp and appraising. 

“We should return to the room,” Hannibal said, as if they had anywhere else to go. Will hummed his acquiescence but didn’t move. Hannibal turned to stare back out the window at the blank wall, unblinking like a snake. And then he opened the driver’s side door and exited the car.

Will was reluctant to follow, but eventually gathered the strength to pick up his battered, exhausted body and step out into the musky dimness of the garage. He leaned on the open door for a moment, recalibrating. A _clunk_ came from the back of the cruiser; Will realized Hannibal was opening the trunk.

Hannibal straightened up and caught Will’s gaze over the top of the car. “I think you should see this,” he said. Although his voice was calm, there was a mix of surprise and concern in his expression that had Will moving before he’d fully registered the meaning of the words. 

The trunk was full of guns and suitcases that, on closer inspection, appeared to be full of blocks of cocaine. It took Will’s overloaded brain a moment to catch up, but when he did, he slammed the trunk, whirling to face Hannibal with what he hoped was an appropriately scandalized expression. “Hannibal,” he said. “What the _fuck_ are we gonna do now?”

“We are going to leave the trunk closed and locked. No one in their right mind would tamper with a police cruiser in a parking garage, especially a garage that is likely full of cameras.”

Will slammed a fist on the trunk, then slumped against it, rubbing his hands over his face. “We stole a police car full of drugs and illegal weapons. We’re the ones who aren’t in their right minds.”

“No one ever said we were. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“And what about the cameras? Shit, you’re right. I’d bet a million dollars we’re being watched right now.”

“A bet you could afford to make,” Hannibal said, with a humorous slant that Will didn’t appreciate in the least, “given the value of the items in our trunk.”

Will groaned. “We’re so fucked.”

“Not necessarily. Although it would be in our best interest to stay calm, physically and verbally. Giving those watching reason to believe we are in distress, or that we are in a position to cause others distress, could prove fatal.” 

Exhaling shakily, Will nodded. He collected himself, standing up and squaring his shoulders. He winced as the right one throbbed viciously, followed by a series of pangs as the scratches and bites on his back, neck, and shoulders protested the sudden shift in posture. 

Hannibal’s keen gaze caught the involuntary wince, and he frowned. “Is your head still troubling you?”

“No.” Will ran a hand through his hair, then realized he’d fallen back into the category of ‘looking suspiciously nervous and possibly in distress’ and stopped. “It’s my shoulder. And all the marks on my back, which, as I said before, I’m blaming on you.”

For the briefest moment, Hannibal smirked. Then his expression cleared, the evidence of momentary smugness wiped clean. “Will.” He put a hand on Will’s shoulder, the touch feather-light. “You need to relax, or the stress will kill you before Jack and the FBI get the chance.”

Will laughed shakily. “I doubt Jack’s still chasing us. I’m sure he’s been taken off our case for good after letting you escape. Inadvertently or not, that wasn’t a stunt he’ll live down easily.”

“Yes. I imagine he will either be forced to resign or retire voluntarily.”

“If he finds out we’re legally married,” Will said, fingering the ring in his pocket, “I’d bet on the latter.”

Hannibal smiled. Not a smirk, but a full expression of delight that Will couldn’t find it in himself to mirror. “Come,” he said, squeezing Will’s shoulder. “We should feed the dogs.”

Once again resigned to his fate (which now included hiding several suitcases of cocaine and illegal weapons in a stolen cop car, feeding the mutilated President of the United States to a pack of illegally-smuggled dogs, and figuring out if he had slept with his ex-psychiatrist-slash-partner-in-crime while drunk off his ass), Will followed Hannibal to the nearest elevator and up to the honeymoon suite. 

. . .

When they reached the top floor of the hotel where the honeymoon suite was located, they were intercepted in the hallways by a woman dressed in nothing but a bathrobe, her hair twisted up under a pristine white towel. The towel, like the ones currently holding together the body of the slaughtered president, was embroidered with the initials _CP—Cesar’s Palace._

“Excuse me,” said the woman, her voice rough as if she’d been yelling all night (which, given the night life in Vegas, was most likely the case), “but are you two the newlywed couple?”

Will glanced at Hannibal, who, thankfully, had slapped on his most charming smile. When he spoke, his voice was equally charming, accent smoky and pronounced in a distinctly seductive way. Despite his lingering reluctance at being married to Hannibal, Will found himself slightly jealous that that tone wasn’t being aimed at him.

“Yes,” said Hannibal, and the woman instinctively mirrored his smile. “I apologize, but we’ve had a rather wild night. My memory is not quite as infallible as it once was. Have we met?”

“Oh, barely.” The woman waved him off. “I was just at the pool when you two were down there. I’m the one who suggested you take the rings off before getting in the hot tub: the chlorine can tarnish the gold, you know.”

“I take it you had a wild night too,” Will chimed in, immediately regretting it when the woman turned her overly cheery smile on him. He did his level best to return it but had the feeling he looked tragically weary and subdued compared to Hannibal. 

“Oh, yeah. Yes, definitely.” The woman nodded, the towel hiding her hair coming undone. She tucked it back down with both hands, tilting her head to one side and then the other. “I just remember you two almost getting kicked out for public indecency.” She laughed, as if this was charmingly funny instead of horrendously mortifying. “Although you weren’t the only ones. My husband and his friends were so obnoxious they almost got thrown out for disturbing the peace.”

Trying not to dwell on the implications of this cheerful accusation, Will ran a hand through his hair, taking a long, deep breath before asking, voice only slightly shaky, “What, uh, time was that?”

“When you two were practically fucking in the pool?” The woman smirked.

Will stifled a sigh. “Yeah. When… _that_ happened.”

“Well, I’d say it was around 4:30AM? Or maybe closer to 5:00AM? I’m not entirely sure; I was totally fucked up by then.” She smiled again, clearly very pleased by this fact. “You were asking about my tattoos,” she added, and, without further prompting, shrugged her bathrobe off enough to show off the elegant, swooping flower patterns etched in ink on her shoulders and chest. Will instinctively averted his eyes, fairly sure the robe would fall completely off, then glanced at Hannibal to see his reaction.

Hannibal was still smiling pleasantly, not averting his eyes in the least. Will felt another pang of bitter jealousy but wrote it off as annoyance at the situation in general. “Yes,” Hannibal said mildly. “I can see why I would be interested. They are quite beautiful, and I’m sure imbued with sentimental value and meaning as well.”

The woman smiled. She shrugged her robe back over her shoulders, nodding. “Oh, yeah. We talked for maybe twenty minutes before you—” she pointed at Will, “suggested getting your wedding vows tattooed. I thought that was the cutest idea, although I know some people wake up with ‘Vegas Tattoos’ that they wish they’d spent a bit more time deliberating over… y’know. Impulse tattoos.” Leaning in as if telling a secret, she cupped one hand to the side of her mouth and whisper-hissed, “Hope you never get divorced. That would be awkward.” Then she straightened up, laughing brightly. “Although you two seem very compatible.”

 _Compatible,_ Will thought miserably, _is one word for it._

If Hannibal was similarly put off by the idea of drunk tattoos, he didn’t show it. Instead, he remained as pleasant and gracious as ever, thanking the woman for helping them recollect the events of the night before politely but firmly insisting that they needed to return to their room to attend to some important matters.

“Ah!” The woman laughed, then winked at him. “I understand. My husband and I also have some _important matters_ to attend to today. Good luck!” She glanced at Will, then back at Hannibal. “Try not to get thrown out for real this time!”

“Yes, we’ll try,” said Hannibal. The woman smiled then walked past him, back down the hall away from their room. “Thank you again for the information. I’m sure it’ll prove quite helpful.”

“No problem,” said the woman. Then she turned a corner, headed for the elevators, and disappeared. 

Once she was gone, Will rounded on Hannibal, any hint of feigned pleasantness melting away. “I really hope for your sake we didn’t get any fucking vows tattooed on us.”

Hannibal fixed him with a _look._ “Actually,” he replied with a hint of icy disdain, “I believe _you_ were the one to suggest it.”

Will, who had immediately repressed this as soon as the woman said it, closed his eyes and focused on repressing it a second time. Once it was safely tucked away in the darkest, dingiest corner of his subconscious, he opened his eyes and headed for the honeymoon suite. “I can’t believe this,” he muttered. He reached the door, then remembered he didn’t have a key card. This only made his resentment worse; he stood aside as Hannibal unlocked the door, refusing to make eye contact, glaring at the obnoxiously-patterned hotel carpet. 

“After you,” said Hannibal, and Will gladly accepted the offer, striding past him into the room. 

“Oh, God.” He stopped on the doormat, once again faced with the horrendous reality of the trashed room. “What a mess.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” Hannibal closed and locked the door behind them. Placing a hand lightly on Will’s arm, he said in a voice that was infuriatingly unphased and practical, “We should take off our clothes. I’m curious to see what we can reconstruct from our… injuries.”

“And tattoos,” Will said bitterly, and saw Hannibal flinch. “Fuck.”

“But first,” Hannibal replied, removing his hand from Will’s arm before Will could shrug it off or slap it away, “we should tend to the dogs. I imagine they’re getting lonely. And hungry.”

Will gave him a sideways look. “Since when do you care so much about dogs?”

Hannibal had the audacity to look properly scandalized. “I care a great deal about animals,” he said. “Have I ever given you a reason to believe otherwise?”

“No, I guess not. Is that why you prefer to eat people?”

Hannibal smiled. “One of many reasons,” he agreed. “And besides, the dogs mean a lot to you, and you mean a lot to me. So, shall we?”

Reeling slightly from this unexpected admission of devotion, Will stared after Hannibal as he made for the master bedroom. Then, with a deep sigh, he followed, once again resigned to the fickle, cruel whims of fate. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My dog was crying at me the entire time I was trying to write this like I love him but he's a shitty roommate lmao


	8. The Master Bedroom

****

**Chapter Eight**

The dogs, it turned out, were not a well-behaved bunch. Will almost blacked out when he saw the state of the master bedroom—somehow worse than the rest of the suite, if that was possible—and swore under his breath. He gripped the doorknob, half tempted to slam the door shut and repress this as he had the Pool Incident, but he couldn’t leave the dogs locked in there alone. They were already crowding around, tails wagging furiously, whining and nuzzling his hands, and it would be beyond cruel to blame them for panicking while he was gone. 

Hannibal put a hand on his shoulder. “I find it amusing,” he said, “that this appears to bother you more than the fact that you’re about to feed the President to your pack.”

Will turned to stare at him. “ _We_ are about to feed the President to my pack,” he said. “Don’t try to pin this all on me. I’m not cutting up a corpse by myself, Hannibal.”

“That’s exactly what you are going to do.” Hannibal stepped back, letting the dogs slip past him into the living room. Their feet slipped and slid on the marble, claws skittering with a sound like hail falling on concrete. “You killed the President, Will. He’s your responsibility.”

Will stared at him. He was too astonished to be angry, mostly because Hannibal had just let his careful facade of ignorance slip. “So you remember me killing him. You know I did it.” He let this sink in, watching a flicker of surprise, followed by irritation, cross Hannibal’s face. “I knew it. You remember more than you’re letting on. Don’t you?”

Hannibal smiled, one of those slow, feline smiles that revealed nothing. “Will,” he said, careful mask firmly back in place, “if I knew anything of import, I would tell you. You can be sure of that.”

“No, I can’t.”

“And if I told you that your ignorance was for your own good?”

Will whirled on him, grabbed him by the front of his fancy black dress shirt, and slammed him against the wall. Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to intimidate Hannibal in the least—in fact, he seemed delighted by this turn of events. Will tried to ignore it, instead focusing on making his point understood. “You—” he said through clenched teeth, “—need to tell me everything _right now_.”

“Or what?” Hannibal’s pupils dilated and he leaned into Will’s grip. “You have very few options here, Will. You need my help.”

As anger flared, red-hot, Will concluded that there was nothing more infuriating than rationality during a confrontation. However, Hannibal was right: without him, Will was screwed. Especially if Hannibal actually did know more than he was letting on. 

“I hate that.” Will stepped back, shoving his fist against Hannibal’s chest as he did; before Hannibal could recover enough to push off from the wall, he turned and followed the dogs down the hall and into the trashed living room. 

“What is it that you hate, Will? That you need my help, or that you can’t convince me to confide in you through a show of force?”

Will considered not replying, knowing it would irritate Hannibal, but couldn’t help himself. “I hate that you enjoy it.” He refused to look back and meet Hannibal’s gaze. He felt it on the back of his neck like a laser beam. Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair, collecting himself. “You do that on purpose.”

“Do what?” Hannibal’s tone was perfectly controlled, neutral, playing at innocence. Will wondered why he even bothered when both of them knew there wasn’t an innocent bone in Hannibal’s body. 

“You know what.”

“Will. If you don’t make yourself clear, how am I supposed to know what exactly it is that’s bothering you?”

“You make me angry on purpose.”

When Hannibal spoke again, Will could tell he was smiling. “Oh, yes. I thought that was a given.”

“See? Told you you knew what.”

“I wanted to hear you say it.”

Will paused, halfway to the bathroom where the President’s body was hidden. This time he did turn, glaring at Hannibal. “Maybe you do need to hear it. Maybe you should know exactly what I think.”

Hannibal tilted his head. Although he was still playing at neutrality, Will could read the burning curiosity in his eyes. “Please do tell,” said Hannibal. 

Will took a long moment, still refusing to look away, gathering his thoughts to deliver the most crushing blow possible. “I think,” he said, and stalked toward Hannibal until they were only feet apart, “that you make me angry because it’s the easiest way for you to instigate intimacy. You’re too afraid to ask me for any other kind, so you do what you’ve always done: you manipulate me into a position where I can’t help myself but get close to you. You don’t want to make the first move because you’re too scared I’ll reject you—because you know I _will_. So tell me, Hannibal: is that why you settle for anger over lust?”

For a long moment, Hannibal looked taken aback. Then that little smile crept back onto his (annoyingly handsome) face. “Because,” he said, “the line between the two is very thin. Especially for people like us.”

Will laughed, the same hysterical laugh that had become his default since waking up in Vegas. “There are no people like us. Just us.”

Before Hannibal could reply, he turned away again. Instead of heading for the bathroom, he went to the kitchenette. There he found a wooden block full of knives (none were missing, he noted with a rush of relief—the last thing they needed was another dead body on their hands) and pulled out the longest, sharpest serrated one. Holding it in one clenched fist, he reemerged into the living room. Hannibal’s eyes immediately flickered down to the weapon; for a moment, he looked genuinely startled, then apprehensive, before finally landing on anticipation. 

“It’s not for you,” Will said, and turned away. Wrenching open the bathroom door, he slammed it behind him and leaned against it, tilting his head back, closing his eyes. His heart pounded, palm slick with sweat where it was wrapped around the antler-hilted blade. To his immense frustration, he realized that he couldn’t decide if he was still angry or incredibly turned on. Which (even more frustratingly) was exactly Hannibal’s point.

“Fuck,” he snapped. Then he crossed to the bathtub and knelt beside it. Peeling back the shower curtain, he wrinkled his nose against the smell of blood and decay. Staring at the desecrated pieces of Denny White, he sighed heavily, bracing himself with one elbow on the rim of the tub. “Well,” he told the corpse, “at least you’re not gonna go to waste.” 

Readjusting his grip on the knife, he got to work.

. . .

The dogs made up for their rowdiness with their ravenousness. It took them under ten minutes to devour every edible inch of the President, gulping down muscle and guts with obvious relish. They even ate the smaller bones, gnawing on the ribs, legs, and arms. Once they were finished Will gathered the scraps and washed them clean in the sink, then placed the bigger bones in a tub of vinegar (which, thankfully, he discovered in the cabinets) to soften. Eventually they would be pliable enough to break into smaller pieces and toss in the garbage disposal. Even if it damaged the disposal, what did Will care? The bones would be found eventually. They just needed to be far, far away by the time they were. 

The quality of the food seemed to endear Will to the dogs even more; they followed him around the suite as he scavenged through the wreckage, looking for evidence of whatever the fuck had happened last night. He absently patted their heads and scratched behind their ears, comforted by their presence. “You’d never lie to me for your own self-serving reasons, would you?” he told one of the dogs—the one with the military collar, Trinity—and gave her an extra scritch under the chin. 

Hannibal, who was (by design) within earshot, shot Will a slightly scathing look. “That’s because they lack the intelligence to do so,” he said waspishly. 

“Oh, is that why?” Will hid a smile. “I thought maybe it had more to do with them not being insufferable narcissists with little to no regard for the feelings of others.” 

As Will expected, Hannibal refused to grace this jab with a reply. Instead he disappeared into the kitchen, most likely to double-check Will’s bone-melting technique. As annoying as this was ( _I’m not a fucking child, Hannibal, I killed the President for God’s sake_ , he wanted to say), it gave him the opportunity he’d been looking for: the chance to search the master bedroom unobserved. 

Slipping down the hall before Hannibal could notice him, he entered the master bedroom, closed the door, and locked it. This was partially as a precaution to make sure he wasn’t disturbed, but mostly to irritate Hannibal if he tried to bust in.

Although the room was a mess, there wasn’t much in it. The dogs had shredded the comforter, strewing feathers everywhere, and the bathroom was a fucking trainwreck of half-eaten rolls of toilet paper, spilled bottles of lotion, and gnawed-on bars of soap, but most of it appeared to belong to the hotel. Will was just about to give up and return to the living room when he noticed something: the drawer on the bedside cabinet was partially open. Not much—just a crack—but enough to warrant a search.

Crawling over the shredded bed (he was too tired at this point to go around, and besides, the bed was massive, taking up more than half the room) he wrenched open the cabinet. 

The cabinet drawer was empty except for two things: a Bible, and an orange bottle of prescription pills. Slowly, grudgingly, Will reached for the bottle. Before he even checked the label, he knew what it would say: _Rohypnol._

“Roofies,” Will said aloud. “I’m gonna kill him.”

Straightening up, suddenly granted a new surge of energy born of vindictiveness, he slid off the bed and unlocked the bedroom door. He was about to make his way to the kitchen to murder Hannibal for real when something else caught his eye: a flash of gold on the bathroom floor, gleaming in the sunlight streaming through the open window. For a moment Will hesitated. And then he approached, already knowing what he would find.

It was a ring. _A wedding ring,_ he thought, and his heart plummeted. 

“Damn it.” He held the ring in his clenched fist until it warmed to the temperature of his skin. Then, with a soul-weary sigh, he tucked it into the pocket containing his own ring. Straightening up, he looked at himself in the mirror. His face was too pale, the bruise around his right eye standing out starkly. His split lip had long since stopped bleeding but was still slightly swollen and painful. Before he could arrest the train of thought, he found himself wondering if he’d gotten the injury in a fight, or if Hannibal had bitten him. Given the events of last night, he’d bet on even odds either way.

No longer murderous but still righteously pissed off, Will crossed to the door again. A picture of last night was forming, scattered pieces coming together like shards of a restored mirror, and the more he learned, the sharper the definition: soon, he realized, he would be able to put it all together. But not quite yet. He was still missing some critical pieces. The most worrisome, of course, was how they’d gotten ahold of a trunkful of cocaine and illegal weapons. He wanted to believe that they hadn’t known they were there, that whoever they’d stolen the car from had seized them from a drug sting, but—

He stopped dead. His breath froze in his lungs, and for a moment he swayed, reaching out to brace against the doorframe. “The massacre in the desert,” he said. “The drug deal gone wrong.” And although he didn’t remember it in the conventional sense, he was suddenly and horribly aware of the truth: he and Hannibal had killed the Redcrest Cartel. And they hadn’t stopped there—they’d killed the cop on the outskirts of Vegas, too. And then they’d taken his car. And the drugs. And the weapons.

“Fuck,” Will said. And then again, with more feeling. “ _Fuck._ ”

Because really, that was the only way to sum up exactly how fucked they were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who left comments on the last chapter, they really made my week and inspired me to sit my lazy ass down this weekend and writer another chapter. Y'all are the real MVPs!!


	9. Under the Influence

****

**Chapter Nine**

When Will returned to the living area, fully prepared for a fight to the death (whether that be physical or verbal) with his newly-wedded husband, he found Hannibal sitting in an elegant and surprisingly un-harmed armchair watching the TV. In one hand he held a glass of wine, absentmindedly petting the dogs’ heads as they milled around his feet, whining. The sight was enough to make Will pause, but what _really_ stopped him dead (not entirely an exaggeration, seeing as he nearly had a heart attack on the spot) was the breaking news headline flashing across the screen.

 _“Earlier this morning a car was recovered from a gully a few miles from Rachel, Nevada,_ ” a newswoman was saying, holding back her hair as fierce desert wind whipped across her face. She was pretty and dark-haired, with blue eyes and strong feminine features. It took Will a moment to realize she reminded him of Alana. He glanced at Hannibal, wondering if he was thinking the same thing. But if Hannibal _was_ thinking about his ex-lover-turned jailer, he wasn’t letting it show. “ _The vehicle is believed to have belonged to an employee of nearby United States Penitentiary Florence ADMAX,”_ not-Alana said, _“whose identity has not been revealed at this time.”_

Will, who already knew what she was going to say before she said it—had known the moment he saw the news banner streaking across the screen—nonetheless sent up a prayer to nobody and nothing in particular that he was wrong.

 _“Blood was found all over the trunk and rear seats of the vehicle,”_ the woman continued, then paused for dramatic effect. The wind gusted, nearly tearing away her next words. _“A blood sample has been taken to a local lab to be tested for DNA matches with known missing people, but the prevailing theory is that this is the car used to transport President Denny White from his helicopter—found at Florence ADMAX earlier last night—to wherever he is currently being kept. Or,”_ she added, wincing against a particularly strong billow of wind, _“wherever his kidnappers stashed his body.”_

“Oh, shit,” said Will, as if this wasn’t exactly what he expected. Hannibal glanced at him, then back at the screen. 

“Yes,” he said mildly. “I suppose that does sum it up.”

“We have to leave.” Will began to pace. The dogs, sensing his agitation, left Hannibal to circle him, whining and nudging his hands with wet noses. He glanced down at the most persistent—the German shepherd with the collar—and paused, something clicking into place. It took a moment for his conscious to catch up with his subconscious, but when it did, he inhaled sharply, turning back toward Hannibal. “Trinity,” he said. At the sound of her name, the dog sat, tongue lolling, head tilted to one side. Will reached down to run his fingers over her collar. “This is the kind of collar that can be attached to a military tactical harness. Trinity came from Florence ADMAX, didn’t she?”

Hannibal neither confirmed nor denied Will’s revelation. He sat perfectly still in the armchair, sipping at his wine as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

“ _Didn’t_ she?” Will said, with more force this time. It wasn’t as if he expected an answer—or needed one, for that matter—but he wanted Hannibal to acknowledge his latest breakthrough nonetheless. 

Hannibal switched off the TV, stood up, and headed back into the kitchen to refill his glass. Will followed him, silently vowing to pour all the wine down the sink with the President’s bones the first chance he got. 

Once his glass was topped off, Hannibal turned to face Will. “I believe the pieces are beginning to come together enough for you to properly profile our crimes,” he said, seemingly unable to hide a brief smile of delight at the prospect. “The evidence is undeniable. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Will, who wasn’t in the mood to agree with anything Hannibal said, considering arguing just to be difficult. But then he remembered how close the authorities were to locating them and stopped himself, opting for a less immature option. “Before I do,” he said, and pulled the bottle of roofies out of his pocket, “I want you to explain this.”

Hannibal had the audacity to look surprised. Although it was likely not at the presence of the roofies, but at the fact that Will had discovered them. “Ah. Yes. I acquired those sometime after arriving here at the Palace, I believe, although my memory is distinctly hazy. I believe I was still under the influence of whatever sedative drugs were administered to us after or during our capture.”

Even though it was extremely far down the list of Potentially Deadly and Irresponsible Things Will and Hannibal Did Last Night, Will said, in a voice that was as self-deprecating as it was accusatory, “We were driving under the influence with the President in our backseat.” He paused, then added miserably, “Maybe after they’ve recaptured us we can be a special featurette on _World’s Dumbest Criminals._ ”

Hannibal shot him a reproachful look, as if this was the most insulting thing anyone had ever said to him in his entire life. “We disposed of the car intentionally, Will. Although we could have done a more elegant and careful job of it. But,” he added, the ghost of a smirk quirking his lips, “we were, as you said, under the influence.”

“With you,” Will said, pointing a finger at Hannibal’s chest, “I’m always under some kind of influence.”

“It’s been quite a while since you were under my influence,” Hannibal said serenely. 

“Well then what’s all this?” Will waved a hand around the room. “Because I definitely didn’t get here on my own, _Hannibal._ ”

“I would consider us mutually entangled.” Hannibal sipped his wine. “Your influence over me and my influence over you have equalized. As I once said, a zero-sum game. Or, perhaps a more accurate term, especially in light of recent events, would be mutual seduction.”

Overcome with irrationally childish anger, Will pulled out both their wedding rings and crossed to the sink. Holding his fist over the drain, he stared Hannibal down. “Maybe we can’t get legally divorced,” Will said, “but I can put these in the garbage disposal. And since we’re not exactly bound to any legal contracts of society anyway, it would be symbolically equivalent, don’t you think?”

Hannibal blinked. For a moment he looked genuinely unhappy, then straightened up and took another sip of wine. “They’re just lumps of gold, Will. The significance of men wearing wedding rings is, in relation to the concept in general, historically irrelevant and uncommon. Wedding rings have traditionally been associated with the practice of marital dowry-giving and represent both fidelity and ownership of one person over another—usually a man over a woman. Considering that you wore a wedding ring during your marriage to Molly yet neither owned nor belonged to her—and, in an emotional as well as physical sense, did not remain true to her—I would assume that the practice of wearing one is of little significance to you in the context of a committed relationship.”

“This,” Will said, gesturing between them, “is _not_ a committed relationship.”

Hannibal quirked an eyebrow. “Is it not? Tell me, Will: have you had any relationships outside of ours since we went on the run?”

Infuriated by the rhetorical tone of this question, Will snapped, “Maybe I have.”

Hannibal tipped his head, expression betraying disbelief and just the faintest hint of irritation. “We both know that isn’t true, Will.”

Will was about to drop the rings directly down the sink when something occurred to him. Sighing, he replaced them in his pocket. “These are evidence. Unless you know where we got them, it’s probably better to keep them until…” He faded off, then shrugged one shoulder. “Until we have a better picture of everything that happened.”

Hannibal nodded, but didn’t say anything. He reached for the wine bottle, but Will got there first. Returning to the sink, he once again turned to meet Hannibal’s gaze. Tilting the bottle, he poured the whole thing down the sink. It ran like blood, rich and red, pooling in the white marble basin before disappearing into the garbage disposal. Then, just to be extra annoying, Will left the bottle lying in the sink. “There,” he said. “Now stop fucking around and actually help me come up with a plan.”

“What a mature and eloquent man you are,” said Hannibal sardonically. And then, lips twitching into a smug smile, he added, “Do you kiss your husband with that mouth?”

Will crossed the narrow space between the sink and the counter, getting up in Hannibal’s personal space. He snatched the wine glass—crystal, of course, with a golden charm in the shape of a fox dangling from the stem—and drained it. Hannibal watched him with a mixture of surprise and annoyance. “Maybe we should see if there’s any security footage from the pool last night,” Will said, “and we can find out.”

Turning away before Hannibal could respond, he stalked out of the kitchen and back toward the bathroom. “I’m gonna see if that woman we talked to earlier was right about the tattoos,” he called over his shoulder. “Feel free to join me if you want.”

“Oh, yes,” said Hannibal, sounded extremely forlorn, as if this was the last thing he wanted to do. “I’ll be just a moment.”

The last thing Will heard before slamming the bathroom door behind him was the tell-tale _pop_ of a second bottle of wine opening, followed by the sloshing of liquid falling into a crystal cup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I wanna say a HUGE thank you to everyone who commented on the last chapter! You're all so sweet and encouraging and I just aaaah THANK YOU x 10000 for the support!!!
> 
> So anyway, I wrote this chapter to distract myself from refreshing the election results every 0.5 seconds, so if it's a bit unedited, blame it on my being extremely jittery with existential dread lmaoooo. Hope it serves as a good distraction for some of y'all, too! And to anyone who lives in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, or Pennsylvania: YOU'VE GOT THIS FAM LET'S GO BLUE!! #SettleForBiden2020


	10. Wedding Vows

****

**Chapter Ten**

Will didn’t hear the door open when Hannibal entered the bathroom. He was too busy trying to contort himself into a position where he could see his entire back and shoulders, having already removed his pants and shoes to assure himself that no, he definitely didn’t have any tattoos down there. It was only when he shifted in front of the mirror that he caught sight of Hannibal watching him from across the room, head tilted to one side as he took small, elegant sips of wine.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to stare?” Will said, meeting Hannibal’s eyes in the mirror. He felt suddenly self-conscious; even though Hannibal had seen him divested of his clothes several times (with the most recent being last night, according to multiple eyewitnesses), this felt different. In the past, he’d almost always been drugged or injured. Right now, with the last of the roofies’ effects wearing off, he was painfully sober and aware of the intensity of Hannibal’s attention.

Hannibal smiled, taking another sip of wine. He swirled the red liquid so that it splashed up along the inner curve of the crystal glass, like bloodstains on a mirror. “Yes, how terribly rude of me. Although I do remember being invited to join you.”

Will didn’t have a comeback to this, so he just sighed and returned to his nerve-wracking task. So far so good, as far as embarrassing drunken tattoos went. At least there weren’t any that would be impossible to cover up. He was already recognizable enough without giving the authorities something new to identify him by. 

“Would you like me to help you look?” Hannibal’s voice was tinted with amusement. “As agile as you may be, I wouldn’t want you to strain anything.”

Although he had the distinct feeling that he was being mocked, Will pushed aside his irritation and nodded. “Yeah.” He rubbed his shoulder, wincing as the pads of his fingers brushed against half-scabbed scratches and bites. “I, uh, I’m not gonna lie. I’m pretty sore.” He then made a tremendous show of avoiding Hannibal’s gaze, turning away as soft footsteps sounded on the marble floor. “Just…” he started to say, then startled at the sensation of Hannibal’s fingers brushing across the cuts on his shoulders and back. _Just don’t make it weird,_ he was going to say, but what was the point? Their relationship was already so god damn weird it would be like asking a vocalist to sing the national anthem with her mouth shut. 

“Relax, Will,” Hannibal said, and for a moment the light touch disappeared. “Most of these are shallow, not even breaching the dermis layer of your skin. A fair amount of bruising here and here—” he touched the bite marks on Will’s shoulder and throat; Will jerked away then relented with a sigh, “—but with a little cleaning and ointment they should heal in a matter of days.” 

“Glad to hear it,” said Will, satisfied with the amount of irritation he managed to inject into four short words. “If anything scars, it doesn’t really matter, though, does it? Just another mark you’ve left on me.”

“So you’ve concluded that I’m the one who did this to you, then.” Hannibal sounded almost pleased; Will shoved down the urge to spin around and punch him in the face. Instead he settled for clenching and unclenching his hands, fantasizing about grabbing Hannibal by the throat, slamming him against the wall, and biting his neck so that they matched. _Give a little, get a little,_ Will thought, but suppressed the feral urge in favor of getting the information he wanted. 

“Just tell me if I have some pretentious quote permanently branded on me,” Will said. He occupied his hands by gripping the edge of the counter, letting his head drop as a pang of pain shot through his skull. 

“Ah,” said Hannibal, and suddenly his hands were on the back of Will’s neck, brushing aside his hair (longer now than it had been in months; he was still wary of letting strangers near him with sharp implements, only rarely allowing Hannibal this dubious honor) to expose the skin there. “It seems that the woman we met earlier was right: we had our wedding vows tattooed.”

“Oh, God.” Will ducked away, twisting around in front of the mirror as if he could, through some miracle of contortion, see the tattoo for himself. After a few moments he gave up, sighing deeply and running a hand over his face. “What does it say?” he asked in a faintly martyred tone.

“It is a quote by Dante Alighieri,” Hannibal said, now sounding unabashedly pleased. “It says _‘Remember this night, for it is the beginning of always._ ’”

Will started laughing, suddenly overcome by an intensity of emotion so strong he almost didn’t know what to do with it. He gripped the counter, ducking his head, and laughed until he was forced to stop for fear of inciting Massive Hangover Headache 2: The Reckoning. 

Hannibal, who was smiling as well (wide enough to be considered the Hannibal equivalent of a hearty chuckle), waited for Will to stop laughing before speaking again. “An undeniably ironic sentiment,” he said, “given the fact that neither of us remember last night.”

At this Will jerked his head up and glared at him. “ _You_ remember some of it,” he said scathingly. “You already admitted it. And—"

“And I drugged you, yes. Although I already gave a reason for doing so.”

“Plausible deniability?”

“Plausible deniability.”

“Well you didn’t have to do it again once we’d _gotten away,_ ” Will complained. “You said you bought the roofies _after_ we arrived in Vegas. So what was the real reason, Hannibal?”

Hannibal went from pleased and smug to blank-faced in an instant. When he spoke, it was in a cautious, measured tone. “A different kind of plausible deniability,” he said. “I was able to induce a state of amnesia through a combination of drugs and strategic injury. Should you have been placed on trial for murdering the President, you would have honestly been able to say that you had no memory of doing so.”

It took a few seconds for the meaning of all this to sink in. When it did, a new wave of clarity washed over Will, followed by a veritable tsunami of anger. “You gave me this fucking head injury, didn’t you? As part of your _‘plausible deniability’._ ”

Hannibal, who (in Will’s vast experience) was physically incapable of feeling remorse, nodded serenely. “Yes. And as you can see, it was a very effective combination. You have no memory at all of the last few days.”

“No, I don’t.” Will reached up to brush his hand over the back of his neck. Now that he knew the tattoo was there, he recognized the raised lines where the words had been etched into his flesh. He assumed it had been dressed and bandaged at some point, but now it was bare and painful under his fingers. “So. If you drugged me again last night because the sedatives they gave us in custody were wearing off, why don’t you remember _everything_ that happened last night? Unless you do,” he added, and wondered why the possibility hadn’t occurred to him already. “Unless this isn’t just another elaborate mind game, another chance for you to sit back, sip wine, and admire my desperate attempts to salvage the wreckage of my life.”

Hannibal took a particularly long sip of wine, then set his glass on the counter. Will glanced at it and Hannibal quickly picked it up again, holding it protectively against his chest as if to keep it from meeting the same fate as its predecessor. “I assure you, Will: I don’t remember anything after 11:00PM last night. The last thing I remember clearly is that we were drinking champagne, which I bought after acquiring the Rohypnol. At that point I had already recovered my stash of casino chips from the desert and cashed them in. I believe I began with two-hundred thousand dollars in chips, but only cashed fifty thousand. I paid a man to cash them for me; it would have been too suspicious for me to go in person.”

Will ran a hand over his face, once again overwhelmed by this new rush of information. His brain, still sluggish from his headache, went into overdrive trying to fit this new piece into the bigger puzzle. “That’s where all that money came from.”

“Yes,” said Hannibal. “As you said earlier, that’s why we came to Las Vegas in the first place.”

“So you have what, one-hundred and fifty thousand dollars left in chips? Jesus, Hannibal. Where did you put all that?”

Hannibal’s expression was inscrutable. “I found them this morning in the master bedroom,” he said. “They were in a paper bag labeled _In-N-Out Burger._ ” The distaste in his voice was comical, his previously neutral expression cracking. 

“ _A_ paper bag?” said Will, and for the first time all morning, he found himself smirking at Hannibal rather than the other way around, “or _two_ paper bags?”

Hannibal glared at him. “Yes,” he said with the crisp finality of someone conceding a point solely to avoid discussing the subject further. “Two. But the more relevant point is that, as you said, the chips are worth one-hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Therefore, the question is: what possessed me to hide such a valuable hoard in such a plebeian parcel?”

Will started laughing again. He couldn’t help it, and even if he could, he wouldn’t have. There was something almost unbearably amusing about Hannibal’s acceptance of everything that had happened last night, _except_ for the fact that he had eaten fast food. “You kill and eat people for sport,” said Will, once he regained his composure (what little was left of it), “but God forbid you even _think_ about eating an all-American fast food burger.” Straightening up, he put a hand on Hannibal’s shoulder, playing at commiseration. “You must have been blitzed out of your mind, Hannibal. I wish to God I could remember that.”

“Yes,” Hannibal snapped, but didn’t shrug off Will’s hand. “I assume that’s all the proof you need that I don’t recall the events of last night. Clearly I was inebriated beyond the point of rationality.”

“I’d say you were out of your mind,” said Will, dropping his hand from Hannibal’s shoulder, “but that would imply that you were ever _in_ your mind.”

“I’ve been in _your_ mind,” said Hannibal, clearly trying to change the subject. Will, who knew all his tricks by now, didn’t fall for it.

“And now it seems I’ve been in yours.” Will caught Hannibal’s eye in the mirror and smirked. “I wonder how I convinced you to eat with me? Or…” he stretched out the word, reveling in the haughty irritation creeping across Hannibal’s face, “…did you need any convincing at all? How embarrassing, Dr. Lecter. How the mighty fall.”

Judging by the sudden shift in Hannibal’s demeanor, Will decided he was one fast food remark away from annihilation, and steered the conversation toward an only _slightly_ less touchy subject. Waving a hand at Hannibal’s still-fully-dressed body, he said with feigned flippancy, “Strip down and I’ll check you for tattoos.”

For a moment, Hannibal looked caught between reluctance and anticipation. He shifted his stance like a predator preparing to pounce (which, had Will continued taunting him about the fast-food thing, he easily could have become), before acquiescing with a nod. “Yes,” he said, voice stiff and stilted. “Although I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t comment on anything… _unsightly_ I may have subjected myself to last night.”

Will interpreted this as _‘make fun of me again and I’m flushing your bones down the garbage disposal with the President’s_ ’ and resolved not to test his luck. Nodding, he looked away as Hannibal started to undress, pretending not to be interested. However, he did reach up to adjust one of the hanging mirrors just enough to catch a glimpse or two out of the corner of his eye. Which wasn’t even necessary, seeing as he was about to get unlimited access to Hannibal’s all-but-naked self anyway, but there was something thrillingly voyeuristic about the fact that Hannibal didn’t know he was watching. 

_Thrilling?_ Will chided himself mentally. _God, what are you, in middle school? He’s a serial killer. You’re a serial killer. Absolutely nothing about this situation should even come close to ‘thrilling’._

“Come here, Will,” said Hannibal, cutting off Will’s mental berating before it could spiral any farther. “I imagine that my tattoo matches yours, in location if not in meaning, so I won’t be able to access it myself.” 

Will turned around. Hannibal, as expected, did not look at all embarrassed or self-conscious. In fact, he held himself with so much statuesque dignity that Will immediately resented him. That much confidence came with a price tag, though, he reminded himself, and decided he would rather have morals—even highly questionable ones—than a complete and utter lack of shame. _Although technically Hannibal has his own moral code,_ he thought glumly. _He has his cake and eats it too._ Of course, Hannibal also ate people, which could arguably be considered a major personality flaw. But before Will could congratulate himself on finding a gap in Hannibal’s impeccable self-presentation, his traitorous brain reminded him that _hey, you eat people, too, you big hypocrite_ , and just like that he was back to square one.

“Will,” said Hannibal again, and Will jolted, feeling slightly dazed as he snapped back to full attention. “Is your head bothering you again? You look like the proverbial deer in the headlights.”

Will shook his head, trying not to look embarrassed. “No. But if it was bothering me, it would be entirely your fault.”

Hannibal’s raised his eyebrows. “It was for your own good, as I said before.”

For a moment Will again considered breaking Hannibal’s face, then thought better of it. The most likely outcome of that scenario was that Will would break his own hand (or Hannibal would break some other part of him in retribution) and they’d be left in the miserably risky position of having to visit a hospital. Although he was disappointed by the theoretical outcome of this cathartic fantasy, Will settled for shoving Hannibal against the marble wall, grabbing his shoulder in one hand and brushing back his hair with the other. 

“Well?” said Hannibal after a long moment. His tone was tight, terse, shoulders flexing under Will’s hand. “Was I correct to assume I was marked in the same way you were?”

Will didn’t respond right away. Hannibal started to shift and he tightened his grip, leaning in to examine the words scrawled in elegant black ink on the nape of Hannibal’s neck. “Yeah,” he said. “You’ve got scratches like mine, but not as many. Guess I was more civilized than you.”

“Will. I was talking about tattoos.”

“Yeah, I know. You’ve got one of those, too—same place as me. Yours says _‘the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death’._ Oscar Wilde,” he added, as if Hannibal didn’t know. “I guess that’s fitting for us.”

Hannibal gave the loudest, most long-suffering sigh Will had ever heard from him. He pulled away, crossing the room and retrieving his clothes. Unlike Will, who had strewn clothes all over the floor, he had neatly folded his pants and shirt and set them on the counter beside his half-empty wine glass. Will watched Hannibal redress, mesmerized by the way his muscles flexed, panther-like and agile. He wondered if Hannibal could feel his gaze on him, then realized that the mirror was still tipped to one side and Hannibal could almost definitely see his reflection watching. Awkwardly clearing his throat, Will turned away, retrieving his own clothes and putting them on as fast as possible. 

Once they were both dressed, Hannibal shot Will one of his most unreadable looks. “Well,” he said, voice betraying irritation and resignation, “I suppose we could have done worse.”

Will shot him a smile. “Much worse.”

Hannibal returned the smile, instantly cheering up. “Now that we’ve got that over with,” he said, adjusting his shirt collar so that it covered the nape of his neck, “I suppose we should move on to the next piece of this puzzle.”

Will’s brief good humor died instantly. “You mean the drug dealers.”

“Yes,” said Hannibal. “I believe we should attempt to reconstruct that particular encounter.”

Sighing, Will nodded. “I imagine you want me to do the reconstructing.”

“Of course. That is your area of expertise, is it not?”

“Fine,” snapped Will. “But I don’t want you hanging around while I do it.”

“Where would you have me go?”

“I don’t know. The kitchen? Go drink the rest of that bottle of wine for all I care. And don’t even _think_ about talking to me.”

Before Hannibal could reply, Will stalked past him, wrenched open the bathroom door, and headed for the living room. Grabbing the remote, he flicked on the TV, which was still showing footage of the crime scene. He dialed the volume down to zero, then positioned himself in the middle of the room, where he could see the TV as well as the sprawl of the city through the window. “Okay,” he said aloud. “Just get it over with.”

Closing his eyes, he carefully arranged each piece of the puzzle in his mental pantry. And then, despite the gathering pain in his head, he let himself drift back in time, back to a patch of desert bathed in moonlight. Back to the early morning hours when the massacre of the Redcrest Cartel had occurred. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still fucking ecstatic over Biden winning and, more importantly, Tr*mp losing. Which I actually found out from Bryan Fuller's Instagram, haha! Best way to get such important new lmaooo But anyway, hell yeah America!!!! We did it lads!!!
> 
> As always, a massive thank you to everyone who left feedback on the last chapter! Y'all are incredible and I appreciate it so much!!<3 <3 <3


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